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Wichita Presbyterian Manor employee tests positive for COVID-19

Wichita Presbyterian Manor announces that a direct resident care employee has tested positive for COVID-19.

“We continue to face the realities that come with the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Courtney Wolfe, Wichita Presbyterian Manor executive director. “Resident and employee safety remain our highest priority at this time.”

This case of COVID-19 was detected during Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) mandated surveillance testing of our employees. 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 employees twice a week.

The employee last worked on Monday, September 7, and passed screening at that time.  The employee wore personal protective equipment (PPE). Contact tracing has determined that the employee had contact with several residents and one other employee during their shift. Per recommendations from the Sedgwick County Health Department, we will test all residents in the unit where the employee worked.

Families, residents and employees have been notified regarding the positive employee.

The employee who tested positive for the virus is recovering at home and will remain in isolation until cleared to return to work by the Health Department. Per CDC guidelines, team members may return to work once they have been symptom free for 72 hours without the aid of a fever reducer and demonstrate improvement in respiratory symptoms, and at least 10 days have passed since symptoms first appeared.  Asymptomatic positive employees will quarantine for 14 days. Upon their return to work, we will follow CDC recommendations related to work practices and restrictions.

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

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

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