With the Salina County positivity rate hovering around 15 percent since the end of October, Salina Presbyterian Manor reports three new cases of COVID-19 at the campus.

According to the senior living community, they conducted two rounds of employee surveillance testing and one round of outbreak testing for residents. One essential health care worker and two health care residents tested positive in testing late last week.

“As COVID-19 continues to spread through the Salina community, we continue to be vigilant in our efforts to keep COVID-19 out of our building,” said Jeanne Gerstenkorn, PMMA’s vice president for health and wellness and infection preventionist. “This virus is highly contagious, and it is vitally important that everyone in the surrounding communities do their part to reduce the spread.”

The employee, who last worked December 8, passed pre-shift screening and wore personal protective equipment as required. The employee will quarantine at home.

The residents have been placed in COVID-19 isolation and are being cared for by designated staff members according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) infection control and
prevention protocols and physician’s orders. The residents will recover in isolation until they meet CDC and KDHE guidelines for leaving isolation.

Under the current guidelines, symptomatic residents may leave isolation when at least 72 hours have passed since resolution of the resident’s fever without the use of fever-reducing medications
and the resident’s symptoms have improved and at least 10 days have passed since symptoms first appeared. Asymptomatic positive residents will quarantine for at least 10 days.

This brings the total cases last week to 1 employee and 2 residents.

The next round of testing is this week on Monday as they  ontinue to test employees twice a week for surveillance testing and test residents once a week.

They encourage all staff members and residents to follow CDC guidelines and best practices as these are continually updated. They have been screening employees as they enter the community building for a shift and before employees have any direct contact with residents. They educate all staff to stay at home if they are experiencing symptoms of a respiratory illness or not feeling well.