Serving O'Brien & Clay Counties
Serving O'Brien & Clay Counties
Residents out of isolation
Three staff members and five residents at Community Memorial Health Center in Hartley tested positive for COVID-19 last month. It was the first outbreak at the facility since the pandemic began.
An outbreak of COVID-19 at Community Memorial Health Center in Hartley has been quelled.
According to interim CMHC Director Lisa Lowe, no residents were testing positive for the virus as of Tuesday morning. The facility experienced its first outbreak of the pandemic last month when five residents became infected. Outbreaks at longterm care facilities are only declared when three or more residents test positive for COVID-19.
"We have been doing regular testing," Lowe said. "We have completed over four rounds of routine testing and we have no residents testing positive. We have transferred all of our residents out of our isolation unit back to their rooms."
Some CMHC employees, who are also subjected to regular testing, were infected during the outbreak and continue to test positive.
"We have an occasional employee who tests positive and most of those employees have children in school," Lowe said.
Lowe reported last month that "all but a few" of CMHC's residents have received a full dose of the COVID-19 vaccine with most having received their booster shots. The elderly are considered to be at high risk for complications and death related to COVID-19.
The COVID-19 positivity rate for O'Brien County was more than 50 percent when CMHC recorded its first positive case last month. That number had dipped to 16 percent by Tuesday night. Statewide, 112 longterm care facilities were reporting outbreaks.
According to a previous interview with Lowe, guidelines from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services require employees to be tested twice per week until the county's positive rate is under 10 percent.
