With the rising cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) in our state, we wanted to share how Sharmar Village is responding to prevent the introduction of this respiratory virus into our community. We are taking temperatures on all residents twice per day and staying alert to any changes in health and habits of all residents.
The CDC guidelines and the Public Health Order issued by CMS and CDPHE require that we restrict visitation. We would like to thank our families for understanding and for taking this very seriously. Due to the limitations of social interaction we are encouraging phone calls and facetime visits with family. Please let us know if you would like to participate in a facetime call with your family member and we will assist. We have also implemented Care Mail through the Sharmar Village website that we deliver daily to our residents. If you would like to send Care Mail click here.
Restricted Visitation: Sharmar Village must follow CMS [Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services] guidelines related to screening, limiting and restricting visitors. We have restricted visitation of non-essential individuals. For essential individuals entering the building, including personnel, and contracted vendors, we are screening all at the entry to the building, taking temperatures, and following gloving and masking requirements. As the COVID-19 virus infection may have no symptoms for 5 days or more, many people could be unaware they are carriers. We will follow our infection control protocol and recommendations of the CDC for the wearing of PPE.
Environmental Services: Sharmar Village is in high alert as to infection control including cleaning of surfaces throughout the facility multiple times throughout the day and evening. We have continued to follow handwashing protocols and are encouraging this with residents as well.
Activities: Sharmar Village is focusing on activities throughout the day that abide by “social distancing” recommendations which are to remain 6 feet apart from each other. Personnel from our admissions team, transportation team, activities team and administrative team are focused on 1:1 activities and assisting with facetime calls with families.
Dining: We are attempting to maintain “social distancing” recommendations in the dining rooms and have moved to serving some skilled and rehab residents in their individual rooms as a precaution. Infection control protocol requires that we move to providing meals in individual rooms for all at Sharmar Village if we have an active case of COVID-19. We will communicate to you if this occurs.
Equipment: There is a worldwide shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE). CDC has sent guidelines for the use of PPE and for the conservation of PPE. Sharmar Village has maintained an emergency supply of PPE for these kinds of circumstances. Although we expect our supply will be adequate, we cannot waste it and the suppliers cannot replenish us at this time. For this reason, the staff will not put on a mask, gloves, gown, etc. every time we enter each resident room or apartment but instead follow our infection control protocol which dictates the wearing of PPE.
Sharmar Village will continue to monitor state and local public health resources and will work with residents in adopting changes as necessary.
For the most accurate information about the outbreak, please visit:
- Pueblo County Public Health: www.county.pueblo.org/public-health/covid-19
- Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment: www.colorado.gov/cdphe
- Centers for Disease Control: www.cdc.gov/coronavirus
- The Optum Emotional Support Help Line at 1-866-342-6892 is free of charge and available to anyone, so you can share this information with family and friends. The help line is staffed by professionally trained mental health experts and caring professionals will connect people to resources. It is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Thank you to our Sharmar Village staff, residents, family members and friends for assisting us in this effort.
