Employees test positive for COVID-19 Sept 30

Three direct resident care employees and one non-direct care employee at Farmington Presbyterian Manor have tested positive for COVID-19.

The employees last worked on Monday, September 28, Wednesday, September 30 and Thursday, October 1, respectively. Each of them passed pre-shift screening and wore personal protective equipment (PPE) during their shift.

On Wednesday, September 30, the first employee notified us they were not feeling well, and a test came back positive. They are recovering at home.

The other three employees were tested as part of ongoing surveillance at our community, which led to the positive result. We are conducting contact tracing to see who the employees may have had contact with during their shift.

We have notified the St. Francois County Health Department. Residents will be tested again next week, along with employees. We will continue with employee surveillance testing as required by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Surveillance testing requires all employees, agency employees, volunteers, hospice, lab and therapy providers at our campus to be tested on a frequency determined by our county’s COVID-19 testing positivity rate. Based on our county positivity rate for COVID-19 tests, our campus has been testing employees twice a week, due to an increase in the county positivity rate.

Residents were last tested on Monday, September 28 and all were negative.

This brings our 7-day total to 6 cases among employees.

“We will continue to everything we can for our residents and employees,” said Jane Hull, executive director.

All employees who test positive will remain in isolation until cleared to return to work by the St. Francois County Health Department. Under the current CDC guidelines, symptomatic employees may return to work when at least 24 hours have passed since resolution of the employee’s fever without the use of fever-reducing medications and the employee’s symptoms  have improved and at least 10 days have passed since symptoms first appeared. Asymptomatic positive employees will quarantine for 14 days. Upon the employee’s return to work, we will follow CDC recommendations related to work practices and restrictions.

Farmington Presbyterian Manor continues to screen all employees as they enter the community building for a shift and before they have any direct contact with residents.  In addition, staff members are wearing masks per CDC recommendations.

For more information about Farmington Presbyterian Manor’s response, go to PMMA’s (Presbyterian Manors of Mid-America’s) website, presbyterianmanors.org/media-room.