Manor of the Plains employee tests positive for COVID-19

Through ongoing surveillance testing, Manor of the Plains has identified one new employee who has tested positive for COVID-19.

The employee last worked Tuesday, October 20, and tested negative for COVID-19 in last week’s surveillance testing. The employee was tested Monday, October 19, along with 70 other Manor of the Plains employees. The other 69 employee tests were negative. A second round of employee surveillance testing was conducted Wednesday, October 21.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) epidemiology hotline and Ford County Health Department were notified immediately. They recommend continuing with the preventive measures we have in place. We will continue to monitor residents for signs and symptoms and continue employee surveillance testing as scheduled October 26 and October 28.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has mandated surveillance testing of our staff. Surveillance testing requires all employees, agency employees, volunteers, hospice, lab and therapy providers at our campus to be tested on a frequency determined by our county’s COVID-19 testing positivity rate. Based on our county positivity rate for COVID-19 tests, our campus is testing staff twice a week.

This brings our cumulative 7-day total to three employees.

Employees are encouraged to follow CDC guidelines and best practices as these are continually updated. The community regularly reinforces with all employees that an employee should not report to work if he or she is experiencing symptoms of a respiratory illness or is not feeling well.

The employees are recuperating at home. We follow CDC and KDHE guidelines in determining when an employee may return to work.  Under the current guidelines, the employee may return to work when at least 72 hours have passed since resolution of the employee’s fever without the use of fever-reducing medications and the employee’s symptoms have improved, and at least 10 days have passed since symptoms first appeared.  Asymptomatic positive employees will quarantine for 14 days. Upon the employee’s return to work, we will follow CDC recommendations related to work practices and restrictions.

For more information about Manor of the Plains’ response, go to PMMA’s (Presbyterian Manors of Mid-America’s) website, presbyterianmanors.org/media-room.

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