Having shared last week that the senior living facility where I serve as the Director of Pastoral Care now has breakthrough cases going on in the building, both amongst residents, as well as staff, we have received further news in this vein.
In a message published today by our building administrator, we were informed of further cases in the building, most of which are breakthrough cases. In this letter, he wrote that the building “received 5 additional positive COVID resident results” in addition to the cases from last week and that they “have now created our Red Zone on that unit”, as all of those cases were limited to just that unit. And the new cases are not limited to residents, as the building has “had 2 new positive cases” amongst the staff.
While this is obviously unfortunate news, the silver lining is that these new resident cases are confined to just one unit, as opposed to having spread throughout the facility. I am keeping hopeful that there will be no spread, and that the virus will remain contained.
The building administrator wrote that he is “working very hard with our pharmacy to come up with a plan to administer the booster to staff and residents as soon as possible to once again build up the immunity within the walls of Cedar Village.” Booster shots against the coronavirus would certainly be helpful, which keeps me further hopeful.
This news has certainly been a bit of a downer to receive, certainly among staff, but, as you can imagine, for residents, as well.
One massive unknown is as to when programming may resume for the residents. While it is unknown as to when the programming for the skilled nursing side of the building will resume, I, however, hold out hope that programming can resume for the assisted living side of the building, since there have not been any positive cases of the virus there. I remain optimistic that we can return to programming for those residents, although who knows?
I will say that, with less than two weeks to go before Rosh Hashanah, this situation certainly makes planning for the high holidays to be fraught with complications and multiple contingencies. We shall see certainly see how this shakes out for the high holidays….