COVID-19 Update | August 26, 2020

August 26, 2020

Dear Residents and Family Members,

Tomorrow ends the quarantine for our independent living residents that resulted from a Village employee that tested positive for COVID-19. Last week Metro Health retested, for a second time, the residents that had come in contact with the positive employee and all tested negative.

Unfortunately, we have an IL resident that began to show signs and symptoms of COVID-19 late last week. Metro Health tested this resident and the resident is positive for the virus. This resident did not come in contact with the positive employee, so we believe this is a case of community-acquired COVID-19.

This resident is currently in isolation and doing well. This resident will continue to isolate in their room per CDC guidance.

It is important that all residents continue to wear facemasks when out of their apartments. It is equally important that residents wear their facemasks when staff are in their apartment. This is true for private duty caregivers as well; they must wear their masks at all times.

As you may recall from the last update, Texas Health and Human Services has implemented Phase 1 of visitation. This phase requires that specific criteria be met across every level of care for visitation to occur:

• • No active COVID-19 cases across the entire facility
• • All employees must be COVID-19 free for 14 days
• • Nursing facility staff must be tested weekly for COVID-19 (applies to DeMatel extended care only)

As we have an active case of COVID -19 in the community, visitation will not be approved by HHS at this time.

Once we can begin visitation, our current plan remains to start with independent living and assisted living. Again, residents and staff will have to remain COVID-19 free. At this time, visitation to DeMatel is unlikely in the near future due to the requirement of testing all employees weekly. For the industry, this requirement is both logistically difficult as well as cost-prohibitive. Even for a smaller nursing facility such as ours, the cost of weekly testing would be approximately $40,000 per month.

There is still much to be determined in the coming weeks regarding visitation so thank you for your continued patience.

Most sincerely,

Paul Harrison

President & CEO