WRC Weekly COVID-19 Update

11/25/2020

We’re sharing our weekly update to keep WRC employees, residents, and families informed of changing regulations and policies at the national and state level, as well as within the WRC continuum. Thank you to all WRC essential workers!

Updates within WRC Continuum

• COVID status at each community (as of 11-25-2020, 5:00 PM)
  • Highland Oaks in Clarion, PA
    • 0 current resident cases, 0 current staff cases, 0 cumulative cases
  • Edgewood Heights in New Bethlehem, PA
    • 0 current resident cases, 1 current staff cases, 2 cumulative cases
  • Ridgmont in Ridgway, PA
    • 0 current resident cases, 0 current staff cases, 0 cumulative cases
  • Laurelbrooke Personal Care
    • 1 current resident cases, 0 current staff cases, 4 cumulative cases
  • McKinley Health Center
    • 3 current resident cases, 3 current staff cases, 12 cumulative cases
  • Please contact the community directly for more information about current and past COVID-19 cases, or the Director of Strategic Communication at 814-220-2142.
• Walgreens and CVS to offer COVID Vaccines at no-cost to long-term care facilities
  • Long-term care facilities nationwide can opt in to a pharmacy partnership program that will provide and administer future COVID-19 vaccines to residents and staff with no out-of-pocket costs. WRC has partnered with Walgreens and will receive this benefit upon FDA approval of vaccine administration.

PA Department of Health Updates

• Wolf Administration Announces New Mitigation Efforts
  • With new modeling projecting 22,000 new COVID-19 cases per day in Pennsylvania in December, Governor Tom Wolf and Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine today announced new targeted mitigation measures to help stop the spread during this critical time. These include a robust enforcement plan targeted at chronic violators along with an effort to ensure schools are safe and in compliance with COVID safety plans. The administration is also encouraging Pennsylvanians to limit unnecessary travel and stay at home.

Other News and Resources

• CMS Issues Alert on How to Handle Holidays
  • Visitation restrictions remain in place according to CMS memo QSO-20-39-NH released in September 2020.
  • Residents are not recommended to go out on leave.
  • Recommendations apply to staff as well.
• FDA Announces Advisory Committee Meeting to Discuss COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate
  • The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has scheduled a meeting of its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) on Dec. 10 to discuss the request for emergency use authorization (EUA) of a COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer, Inc. in partnership with BioNTech Manufacturing GmbH.
• CMS Announces Comprehensive Strategy to Enhance Hospital Capacity Amid COVID-19 Surge
  • Today, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) outlined unprecedented comprehensive steps to increase the capacity of the American health care system to provide care to patients outside a traditional hospital setting amid a rising number of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) hospitalizations across the country. These flexibilities include allowances for safe hospital care for eligible patients in their homes and updated staffing flexibility designed to allow ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs) to provide greater inpatient care when needed. Building on CMS’s previous actions to expand the availability of telehealth across the nation, these actions are aimed at allowing health care services to be provided outside a hospital setting while maintaining capacity to continue critical non-COVID-19 care, allowing hospitals to focus on the increased need for care stemming from public health emergency (PHE).