January 24, 2022
Dear Residents and Family Members,
I hope you all had a restful weekend despite all the information you have been receiving from us. Unfortunately, today is no different as we have six new cases to share with you. Before I share the details, I want to assure you that our team is truly working 24/7, and we are doing everything in our power to stop the spread of COVID-19 on our campus.
Late last evening a member of our Katzin team tested positive. The employee last worked January 21, 2022. Unfortunately, this employee is symptomatic. In addition, today, five people have tested positive. The first is a member of our Administration team. The employee last worked today and is fortunately asymptomatic. The second and third are Independent Living residents and unfortunately one of them is symptomatic. The fourth and fifth are Assisted Living residents and are both, fortunately asymptomatic. All four residents who have tested positive are in isolation.
With so many cases please know we are continually conducting contact tracing. In addition, we have notified all mandated regulatory agencies. And lastly, we continue to follow CDC guidelines for employees returning to work.
I want to again share our testing protocol as I understand many are wondering how positive cases are detected.
- All direct care staff are tested before each shift begins. In some cases, this is how we detect that they are positive for the COVID-19 virus.
- If an employee is not a direct caregiver and is therefore not tested immediately upon arrival, we test if symptoms appear.
- If during contact tracing we learn that an employee is exposed, we test at that time. This is another way we may find a positive employee result.
- We may learn of positive cases through routine testing with PCR tests, and we may also learn if an employee is tested through another employer.
- Residents are tested on a set schedule, or if we learn that they may have been exposed. We also test residents who are experiencing symptoms.
Additionally, often employees call us to say they are ill; we then tell them to come to the campus for a test. In this case we may find they are positive although they are not even scheduled to work.
I hope this provides clarification. Please understand that due to HIPAA, as well as employee confidentiality, we give as much information as we can while honoring our staff and residents’ privacy.
I also want to share that our Independent Living activities will remain on hold until all testing is complete. That said, we will be arranging individual times for Independent Living residents to go to the Aquatics and Fitness Center.
In addition, as our residents know, SDGE has a planned power outage for most of our campus tonight from approximately 10:00PM-6:00AM. We believe that The Katzin Residence will not be affected by this outage. There will be staff on site in each building for the duration of the power outage. The increase in COVID-19 cases as well as the power outage is creating a tremendous amount of anxiety for some of our residents, and we want everyone to know that will be on campus to support them.
Sincerely,
Pam Ferris
President and CEO
The Melvin Garb Foundation Presidential Chair
PS: Thank you to those who have supported our COVID HEROES FUND. If you would like to support the staff at this time, you may contribute on our website at www.seacrestfoundation.org or simply mail your gift to Seacrest Foundation and designate COVID-19.