**COVID-19 Update**
September 16th, 2021

I hope your week is going well.

On September 10, 2021, The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) published new guidance that includes a new methodology for determining the frequency of routine testing of staff members for COVID-19. Previously, the Center based routine staff testing on the county positivity rate as published by the Virginia Department of Health. The September 10 CMS Memo recommends testing based on the new CDC COVID-19 Integrated County View website that reports the level of community transmission of COVID-19 by county or city for each state. We have moved to using this new tracker this week and will begin reporting the community transmission levels each week in the section below.

CDC County Community Transmission Level and Percent Positivity: High – 6.7%
Testing Frequency for Staff and Patients:  While in an outbreak, patients and staff are tested every 3-7 days until the Center is 14 days without a positive test result.
PPE: The supply remains adequate. Staff have received education on appropriate PPE utilization.
Visitation: In-person visitation is temporarily suspended for all patients during the outbreak with the exception of compassionate care visits.

Please feel free to reach out with any questions you may have.

Sincerely,

Amanda Coons, LNHA
Administrator