COVID-19 UPDATE | NOVEMBER 13, 2020

Friends and Family of Santa Marta,

Despite the ongoing wave of COVID-19 locally and across the country, our community remains resilient thanks to the dedication of our team members and the cooperation and support of our residents.

Santa Marta currently has no positive cases of the virus among residents. This follows testing of all health care residents on Tuesday.

As the positivity rate within Johnson County continues to trend upwards, we are administering team member tests twice every week for the foreseeable future out of an abundance of caution. Of the more than 400 tests we conducted for healthcare staff on Monday and Wednesday, only two came back positive. The affected individuals are a culinary team member and a private duty caregiver. We have completed contact tracing and determined that no residents or team members were exposed.

The current number of impacted staff is six, which includes the most recently identified cases. All affected individuals are safely isolating at home and we wish them a speedy recovery.

With the county positivity rate currently above 10%, we are obligated to suspend indoor visitations communitywide to prevent spreading the virus at Santa Marta. While we’re disheartened by this setback, we appreciate your understanding as we do everything in our power to keep residents and team members safe. Indoor visitations will resume when the positivity rate falls below the 10% threshold for more than two weeks.

Accordingly, we recommend window visits, video calls and social media as the safest methods of staying connected with your loved ones in higher levels of living. Independent living guests are still welcome to take advantage of outdoor visits.

We are also conducting compassionate care visits in accordance with state guidance. If you believe your loved one is eligible, we will complete a thorough assessment to verify. If qualified, the compassionate care visits will be conducted with strict safety measures in place as per state requirements.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me and the rest of the Santa Marta leadership team at updates@www.santamartaretirement.com. As usual, we will share additional updates in our weekly website and Facebook posts.

Thank you and God bless,

Chet Surmaczewicz

Executive Director