Manor of the Plains identifies a COVID-19 positive employee

A non-direct resident care worker at Manor of the Plains has tested positive for COVID-19.

The employee last worked Wednesday, Sept. 30, and was sent home when the positive test came back. The employee screened in before their shift, wore personal protective equipment (PPE) and is currently asymptomatic.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) epidemiology hotline and Ford County Health Department were notified immediately. They do not recommend any additional testing at this time, other than the regular surveillance testing already taking place. We will monitor residents for signs and symptoms.

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.

All residents are scheduled to be tested today, October 1.

This brings our cumulative 7-day total to one resident and one employee.

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 employee is 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.

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