By Mac Cordell and Kayleen Petrovia
Union County officials are saying that Mobile Meals will continue, at least for now.
Melanie Ziegler, Vice President of Community Engagement with Memorial Health, confirmed that, “we are continuing Mobile Meals for the time being.”
“Everything is changing so quickly and circumstances could cause us to make a change, but right now we are continuing with Mobile Meals.”
She said officials are “evaluating what we are doing with our Community Meal sites.”
Mobile Meals are taken to a senior’s home and eaten there. Community Meals are delivered to a central distribution site in a community and given to seniors there.
“While these are not ‘mass gatherings’ according to Gov. DeWine’s order, they are none the less significantly sized groups of elderly people in a small area, so there could be a change to Community meals.”
Ziegler said Memorial Hospital is “fine.”
“We prepare for this all the time,” Ziegler said. “Just this isn’t a test.”
Officials said that for more than a decade, Memorial Health has “been preparing, practicing, and refining processes for scenarios like this and we are well prepared to adapt.”
Zeigler said Memorial Health officials are “in constant contact” with local and state health departments.
“We are actively implementing measures in concert related to the prevention, evaluation and treatment of COVID-19,” according to a statement from Memorial Health. “In addition, our team continues to manage our infrastructure for infection prevention and emergency preparedness and we reassess daily, as needed.”
Local senior living facilities are also taking precautions.
At Thursday’s press conference, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced he was imposing a restriction, limiting nursing home patients to one visitor per day in hopes of protecting vulnerable patients from COVID-19 exposure.
Some local facilities are going even further.
“We have closed off our doors,” said Chelsea O’Brien, with Monarch Skilled Nursing and Rehab.
She said family members, contractors, delivery drivers and other visitors are banned from the building.
She said medical professionals are permitted into the building, “but upon entry, they have to complete an entire health screening.”
At Memorial Gables, the visitor policy has been refined to allow for one visitor within a 24-hour period per resident.
“This allows family members to ‘take turns’ in visiting their loved ones, but restricts the number of individuals in total,” said Heather Adcock, the administrator at Memorial Gables.
Heather Hunter, with Brookdale Marysville did not offer details about the facility’s visitation policy except to say they are “following local and state guidelines in regard to visitor protocol.” She said the facility has stopped planned group outings and suspended groups of three or more coming into the community.
With the restriction on visitors comes another concern. Many residents in nursing and assisted living facilities can feel isolated.
“As a result of these visitor restrictions and the fact that we have canceled all activities off the property of Memorial Gables, all of our residents are being monitored for changes in psychosocial wellbeing,” Adcock said.
Even with the restriction on visitors, nursing homes know they need to be taking other steps.
“Right now, our main focus is prevention,” Hunter said. “We are acting with an abundance of caution, reinforcing our policies and procedures for contagious illnesses such as influenza with staff.
O’Brien echoed the idea that at Monarch Skilled Nursing and Rehab, “residential safety is a top priority. Everyone should have a clean, safe, living space.”
Hunter said Brookdale has an emergency response team in place to “provide support to the local teams, especially in the event of a confirmed case of COVID-19.”
She said that if a confirmed case were to occur at Brookdale, “we would continue to act in full compliance with the CDC, local and state health authorities.”
“We would follow the guidelines of the CDC recommendations for confirmed cases in healthcare settings; those guidelines include steps to minimize chances for exposure, adhering to personal protection protocols and managing visitor access,” Hunter wrote in a statement.
In his press conference, DeWine said he knows the decisions are difficult, but it is up to visitors to help protect those in a nursing home.
“You’re sick — your mother’s in the nursing home,” DeWine said. “Could you maybe get through and pass it and didn’t have a fever and walk in there and get by? Yeah, maybe. But, should you do it? Not if you love your mother.”