Update from Administrator – July 6, 2020
Today, we learned that a former resident of Lanessa Extended Care tested positive for COVID-19. We made many phone calls throughout the afternoon to reach every family member / responsible party possible prior to sending this email. We were able to remain free of COVID-19 since the pandemic began, but sadly, it has made its way in our center.
We have notified the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and its division of Epidemiology and we are acting on all guidance they provide. We have taken other immediate steps to protect the health and safety of our residents and staff. We are undertaking a deep cleaning of the entire building. Based on CDC and DPH guidance, residents and staff displaying any signs and symptoms that would indicate the need for testing will be tested. Lanessa residents on the Windsor unit were tested on 7/6/2020 and we are awaiting the results. Staff who had direct contact with the former patient will be tested 7/7/2020 and the balance of staff and residents will be tested during this week. We have taken other immediate steps to protect the health and safety of our residents and staff, including quarantining the residents to their respective unit.
As I have mentioned many times in our weekly correspondence and calls, at the start of this pandemic, we initiated a series of protections aimed at mitigating the threat of coronavirus at our center. These included restricting visitors from Lanessa, taking the temperature of anyone who enters the facility, requiring anyone who enters the facility to complete a health questionnaire, and increasing monitoring of all residents every day. We also have been taking the temperatures and oxygen saturations of every patient at every shift for months now. We also continue taking temperatures and requiring completion of a health questionnaire for all staff at the beginning of each shift.
There is no greater priority for us than the health and safety of our residents and staff. We understand this is a difficult time for our patients and their families, and we want you to know that we are doing everything in our control to provide a safe environment. We also want to thank our many staff for their unflinching commitment to the health of all our residents.
We will continue to provide all updates as they become available here on Facebook. We encourage you to contact us directly with questions specific to your loved one. You now have my direct email. Another email you may utilize is Info@LanessaExtCare.com which is a general email address that is monitored by several department heads, in the event I am unable to respond to you in a timely manner.
We appreciate the support of our community during this time.