Update from Administrator – 4/25/20
April 25, 2020
Hello,
Today, we learned that 2 residents of Newtown Rehabilitation & Health Care Center tested positive for COVID-19. One resident had been discharged to a local hospital on April 24, 2020 and the second had a positive swab. The first resident remains at the hospital and the other is under the care of our capable staff in isolation. We made many phone calls throughout the morning/afternoon to reach every family member / responsible party possible prior to sending this email.
We have notified the Connecticut Department of Public Health and its division of Epidemiology and we are acting on all guidance they provide. We have taken other immediate steps to protect the health and safety of our residents and staff. We are undertaking a deep cleaning of the entire building. Based on CDC and DPH guidance, residents and staff displaying any signs and symptoms that would indicate the need for testing will be tested. We have taken other immediate steps to protect the health and safety of our residents and staff, including quarantining the residents to private rooms.
At the start of this pandemic, we initiated a series of protections aimed at mitigating the threat of coronavirus at our center. These include restricting visitors from Newtown, taking the temperature of anyone who enters the facility, requiring anyone who enters the facility to complete a health questionnaire, and increasing monitoring of all residents every day. We also have been taking the temperatures of every patient at every shift since this weekend. We also began taking temperatures and requiring completion of a health questionnaire for all staff at the beginning of each shift last week. We are now taking temps halfway through their shifts and reviewing and documenting their Oxygen saturation, per new recommendations of the CDC.
As of April 24, more than half of the nursing homes across our state are in the same situation – with dozens of additional nursing homes awaiting testing results of their residents.
There is no greater priority for us than the health and safety of our residents and staff. We understand this is a difficult time for our patients and their families, and we want you to know that we are doing everything in our control to provide a safe environment. We also want to thank our many staff for their unflinching commitment to the health of all our residents.
We will continue to provide all updates as they become available here on Facebook. We encourage you to contact us directly with questions specific to your loved one. You now have my direct email. Another email you may utilize is Info@NewtownRHCC.com which is a general email address that is monitored by several department heads, in the event I am unable to respond to you in a timely manner.
We appreciate the support of our community during this time.
Jane DeVries
Administrator