For Residents, Family Members
Hello, this is Jeff Petty on Thursday May 14th, with the latest update about how Wesley Enhanced Living is facing the challenges associated with COVID-19. As always, you can get more regular updates and specific information about your WEL community from your Executive Director’s communications. My next communication is scheduled for Thursday, May 28th.
Let me start again today with words of appreciation. Our residents and families across all communities, by heeding our requests to isolate, have been fundamental in beginning to lessen the impact of this pandemic in WEL communities. Our employees have simply been extraordinary and courageous in carrying out WEL’s mission, and I am so proud of all of them.
Thank you for what all of you have and continue to contribute.
We have, of course, been tracking the number of residents and employees who have tested positive for the virus. But we have also been tracking the date those residents and employees first exhibited symptoms and we are seeing encouraging trends. For the week ending Monday March 29th, across all WEL communities, the first 9 nursing residents who subsequently tested positive experienced their first symptoms. We seemed to have peaked the weeks ending April 13th and April 20th with 38 and 42 residents respectively first showing symptoms who subsequently tested positive. Since then, we have seen this drop significantly with only 8 new, mostly independent, residents reporting their first onset of symptoms and subsequently testing positive over the most recent week ending May 11. Upper Moreland and Burholme continue to be free of the virus for residents and employees.
Not surprisingly, the pattern for employee cases has been the same. Beginning the week ending April 6th, 13 employees experienced the onset of first symptoms and then tested positive for the virus, which then seem to have also peaked the week ending April 20th at 26. With a handful of employees who have not received results as of today, we have not had an employee test positive who first experienced symptoms after April 30th.
We believe that these trends are meaningful and are a result of the commitment and actions of all of you. And although we are pleased we are seeing a decline in cases at WEL, it is important to
recognize that the pandemic persists as a significant threat to the health and well-being of our residents and staff and we need to maintain our utmost vigilance.
The 2nd part of my message is that I believe it is important that we begin to think about the future and a time when we are able to ease the restrictions we have in place. We have started the planning process to institute a red-yellow-green-type indication system for our communities much like you see state officials describing. This plan would include, for example, how we would begin to phase in and structure resident dining, activities, and visitation within our communities. I can promise you that the WEL team will be thoughtful and deliberate in our methods of reintroducing certain services and comforts. And, ultimately, our recovery actions will align with CDC, Department of Health and governmental guidance, as they have throughout this difficult time period. We would like to hear from all of you about it as well, but please understand that there are widely different opinions about how and when restrictions should be eased, in general nationally and specifically within WEL Communities, and so inevitably the final plans will not necessarily align with everyone’s opinions.
Please also keep in mind, even if other businesses in the area begin reopening within the next few weeks, our plans may still ask residents, families and our staff to adhere to more stringent restrictions than the general public in order to protect our community. Our residents are the most at risk generally from this virus, and our plans need to reflect that.
While we have one eye on the future, the other is squarely on our current challenges. We will be sharing more details about how we might approach our “new normal” in the coming weeks. Until then, I ask and remain grateful for your continued patience and cooperation.
I encourage you to continue to submit questions and comments to our dedicated resident email at residentquestions@wel.org. We are doing our best to address those messages as we receive them.
Thank you for your support and trust you place in us, and wishing everyone good health as we continue to fight through this unprecedented time, together.