CHESAPEAKE, Va. — More than a dozen people at the Southeastern Virginia Training Center tested positive for COVID-19.
That's according to Meghan McGuire who is the Senior Advisor for External Affairs with the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services.
McGuire said all the individuals were tested as a precaution. They are all asymptomatic and being closely monitored at this time. Last month, the center reported no cases.
The Southeastern Virginia Training Center is a care facility that services individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
The facility itself is divided into 15 homes with five people residing in each home. All the people who tested positive are living in one home, which will hopefully help contain the spread to other residents.
All of their families have been notified and no one else on the campus has tested positive.
DBHDS has started implementing a mitigation plan aimed at stopping the spread of the virus in care facilities and homes under their jurisdiction. There are new visitor restrictions and screening protocols all visitors have to abide by.
Additionally, DBHDS plans to incentivize all staff members who are considered essential workers for their necessary work during this pandemic.
Other methods of precaution and prevention include:
- Temperatures are taken of all staff to ensure they are not running a fever and self-quarantine is mandated for any staff who had to take a test for COVID-19.
- Infection control measures have been implemented such as providing anti-bacterial soap and products to patients and staff, issuing facemasks to staff and residents as medically indicated, increasing cleaning and disinfecting of surfaces, and ordering additional cloth facemasks to ensure all staff and patients are as protected as possible.
- We are also aggressively monitoring symptoms of staff and patients for rapid identification of a possible infection and increasing infection control measures.
- SEVTC has a PPE supply dedicated to protecting its staff and patients from an outbreak. At the current time, DBHDS is not experiencing a critical shortage of PPE. However, due to the national shortage of PPE, the CDC and VDH have directed healthcare facilities to employ strategies to optimize the use of the current available PPE supply.
- All staff caring for patients with COVID-19 or symptoms consistent with COVID-19 are provided full personal protective equipment.
- Given the recent guidance from the CDC that face coverings are recommended for use in public, DBHDS is also incorporating this to be followed in the facilities and is procuring an additional supply of cloth masks for staff. In the meantime, non-direct care staff may wear their own masks per recent federal guidance. DBHDS continues to actively address and modify changes as needed in response to COVID-19 developments.