Oregon limits visitors to long-term care facilities to protect residents from coronavirus - OregonLive

This is breaking news and will be updated.

Oregon officials announced several new emergency policies aimed at protecting residents at long-term care facilities from coronavirus, including limiting and screening visitors, documenting who has visited and reducing residents’ community outings.

It was the second major state initiative in two days aimed at heading off a COVID-19 breakout in an Oregon nursing home. On Monday, the state announced it intended to inspect the 670 long-term residential care facilities in the state to determine the adequacy of their infectious agent emergency plan.

By Tuesday’s 5:30 p.m. press conference, state officials had completed the inspection of about 200 of the facilities and found no significant problems.

Tuesday’s plan to limit visitors may well prove the most controversial. All visitors to any facility -- family, friend, vendor and employee will be screened at the door. The number of visitors any resident may have will be limited to two at a time. Only in the case of imminent death or in cases where visitors are deemed vital to the resident will those limits be relaxed, the state officials said.

Drastic measures are called for at this point, after the COVID-19 virus took hold inside a Kirkland Wash. skilled nursing facility, infecting 50 and killing 18. said Fariborz Pakseresht, director of the Oregon Department of Human Services.

“We’re just trying to stay ahead of this,” Pakseresht said. “We’re trying to avoid the tragic events that have unfolded in Washington.”

Leaders from the Oregon Health Authority and the Department of Human Services said Tuesday evening that they were relying on the authority of Gov. Kate Brown’s earlier emergency declaration to set the following restrictions on nursing, assisted living, memory care and residential care facilities across Oregon:

1. Restrict visits to only “essential individuals,” including medical personnel, facility staff or friends and family who are “essential for the individual’s well-being and care.”

2. Limit essential visitors to two per resident at any time;

3. Screen all permitted visitors for respiratory or other potential COVID-19 symptoms and for recent travel to an affected geographic area or high-risk setting before entering the facilities;

4. Document the screenings of all visitors;

5. Limit residents’ outings in their communities; and

6. Encourage and help arrange access to virtual visits when visitors aren’t able to enter.

“Oregonians in our nursing homes are particularly vulnerable to this disease,” said Pat Allen, the health authority director. “We are working in close partnership with long-term care facilities and asking families, friends, and others who work in and visit these facilities to help us protect the health and safety of our parents, grandparents and other loved ones.”

About 45,000 residents live in 670 long-term care facilities across Oregon.

The new restrictions are similar to those announced in Washington, where the virus has taken hold in several nursing homes.

Though the COVID-19 epidemic is in its early stages, come Portland-area hospitals and health systems are already struggling to maintain an adequate supply of personal protective equipment. The popular N-95 respirator, for example, has been hard to obtain because some of the Chinese factories that make them have been shut down.

That shortage apparently hasn’t been a problem for Oregon’s senior housing facilities. Dr. Dean Sidelinger, the state’s public health official, said flatly that nursing homes and other senior housing facilities inspected so far have adequate equipment and appropriate plans in place to deal with an event.

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