Statement from Sharon Health Care Center on Covid-19 Patient Diagnosis
This morning, we learned that a long-term resident of Sharon Health Care Center tested positive for Covid-19. The female resident resides on one of our long-term care units and remains in our center under the caring hands of our staff.
We have notified the Connecticut Department of Public Health and its division of Epidemiology and we are acting on all guidance they provide. We have also reached out to our families, by phone, individually contacting our families and responsible parties to bring them up to date.
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, no other residents and staff have been tested, at this point, as no one else is displaying any signs and symptoms that would indicate the need for testing. We have taken other immediate steps to protect the health and safety of our residents and staff, including quarantining the resident to a private room. The patient’s roommate has also been placed in a private room and is being monitored as well, with added precautions in place.
At the start of this pandemic, we initiated a series of protections aimed at mitigating the threat of coronavirus at our center. These include restricting visitors from Sharon, 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 of every patient at every shift since this weekend. We also began taking temperatures and requiring completion of a health questionnaire for all staff at the beginning of each shift last week. We are now taking temps halfway through their shifts and reviewing and documenting their Oxygen saturation, per new recommendations of the CDC.
There is no greater priority for us than the health and safety of our residents and staff. Our thoughts are with our patient. We understand this is a difficult time for our patients and their families, and we want them 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.
# # #
Tim Brown
Director of Marketing & Communications
Athena Health Care Systems
860-751-3937 – direct
TBrown@AthenaHealthCare.com