Lynn Beede: Fully vacinated residents are enjoying community activities

The Coos County Nursing Home in Berlin has no active COVID-19 cases. We do have an employee who is vaccinated and has someone in their household who tested positive. According to current guidance, because the employee is fully vaccinated, they do not need to quarantine. The state is still doing contact tracing and we are also encouraging the employee to notify people they have been in close contact with. All employees and visitors are encouraged to self-monitor and report even the slightest symptom of COVID-19.

The only people required to test at this time are unvaccinated and partially vaccinated employees. Fully vaccinated employees and residents will only need to test if we should fall into response testing or outbreak status. Testing frequency continues to be based on community transmission rates. Our current county transmission rate is less than five percent, so we will test monthly. Should our county positivity rate fall between five and 10 percent, then we will test weekly, if greater than 10 percent then we will test twice weekly. We are required to monitor the county positivity rate every other week and adjust the frequency of performing employee testing according to the above guidelines.