WRMC Community Members & Families,

We have continued our twice a week COVID testing of our staff and vendors. On Monday January 6th, 1 caregiver in Skilled Nursing tested positive for COVID. All other staff and vendors were negative for the current two-week period. All residents in skilled nursing, assisted living, and memory care were tested using rapid response testing twice in the last 14 days, with all results returning negative.

Assisted Living & Memory Care have now gone 14 todays without new COVID cases among staff or residents. The quarantine in assisted living and memory care will be lifted at 9am tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, the new staff case in skilled nursing on Monday will require the quarantine to be extended.

Due to the county positivity rate being 25%, all visitations will remain suspended for all areas.

As a reminder, we will have our Assisted Living COVID vaccine clinic on 1/12/21. Walgreens will again be the vaccine clinic provider and we will be receiving the Pfizer vaccine. Our nursing leadership team has already been contacting our Assisted Living residents and responsible parties to discuss and receive consents for the COVID vaccine.

At this time the State of Ohio has only authorized healthcare workers, emergency service personnel, skilled nursing, and assisted living residents to receive the COVID vaccine. WRMC has no control of when the vaccine could be made available for Independent Living community members.

It is our goal to get the vaccine to all of our residents who would choose to take it as soon as possible. We have been pushing Walgreens for leniency and to make an exception due to the nature of our campus connectivity. At this time they are unable to formally address this concern.

That being said, the vaccines must be brought up to room temperature in order to be administered. Once they have been prepped they must be used or be thrown out. Because of how they are packed, there is a potential for there to be extra doses beyond what was planned. The State of Ohio has authorized pharmacies and providers to deliver the vaccine to persons not in the first roll out rather than wasting any doses. This scenario presented itself during our 12/30/20 vaccine clinic and we were able to get 34 Independent Living community members vaccinated.

We prioritized community members with spouses living in care areas and those who were receiving private duty or home health services, who are potentially exposed from their service providers. We then went door to door on the first floor of buildings 4 & 5 offering the vaccine. The first floor was chosen because of the hastened timing needed to administer the doses. We will jump at every opportunity to administer the vaccine to our IL residents should it be possible. At our next clinic if we find ourselves in a similar situation we will go building by building and floor by floor as needed.

Should you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me directly.

Sincerely,

Jason French
President