COVID-19 Updates

Check this page regularly for the latest COVID-19 Updates from Collar City Nursing & Rehabilitation Center.

• Therapeutic Recreation being conducted via CTV Channel broadcasted to each room
• Digital Visitation through our concierge team
• Screening employees for any symptoms prior to entering our community
• Providing and wearing regulation approved PPE (Personal Protective Equipment)
• Routine Commercial Disinfecting Service of all hallways and common areas
• Close communication with local and state health officials

Dear Family Members,

The New Corona Virus represents an historic infection control challenge that continues to test the very best of our National and State response systems and challenges the very best of our hospital systems and nursing homes, where residents are especially vulnerable.

Despite the backing of the United State and the World, data from the international scientific teams is still contradictory, inconclusive and inadequate to understand the basics, like how is the disease transmitted.  Some suggest that the virus is carried and spread by seemingly healthy people, making carriers difficult to identify.  Others have suggested that the virus may linger much longer than believed and be capable of being moved in air.  The CDC has steadfastly held onto directives aimed at reducing droplet exposure and screening policies designed to identify those with fevers and who travelled to foreign countries.  The CDC recently added some confirmed new symptoms, nearly six months after the virus ravaged China, and after the virus has spread throughout much of the globe.  Every day we have more questions and learn more, but scientists still know little about the virus and its methods of transmission.   In turn, our government has been slow to change directives despite initial directive not being nearly as effective as predicted.  Governmental efforts underway all make scientific assumptions that may prove incomplete or inaccurate.  What we do know is that the virus that causes COVID 19 spreads efficiently and is virulent.  It is also apparent that the CDC is a leading authority, and combined with the directives of the State and Local Health Departments are the directives we must follow.

Quite some time ago, Collar City Nursing & Rehabilitation, put into place a series of precautions designed by the CDC to slow the spread of the virus including limiting visitors, screening for symptoms, taking temperatures, training on infectious disease controls, enhanced cleaning and Personal Protective Equipment, and restricting visitors, restricting and/or limiting group activities etc… We continue these protocols and have since added isolation and testing, when, and how, permitted by governmental authorities.  As has been the case in thousands of US skilled nursing facilities and many more around the globe, governmental directives and our diligent implementation, likely slowed the rate of transmission but did not eliminate it.  Likewise, governmental recommended PPE protocol has been modified due to international shortages and the Government’s inability to assist in obtaining the quantity of PPE that would have previously been considered best practice.

Hospitals, ships, schools and entire towns, cities and States have had tragic outcomes.  Last month, New York State for example, estimated that 13.9% of its mobile population or 1.4 million people have already been infected in the state.  Other experts put the number much higher.

Many of you may yourself be directly or indirectly affected or know others who are affected by the New Coronavirus.  If you are affected, please know that our hearts and thoughts are with you. As lifelong caregivers, we are pained that something we know so little about and is so powerfully destructive is in our midst. Unfortunately, Collar City Nursing & Rehabilitation has not been immune.