Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) released an updated Public Health Order (PHO) and guidance for indoor visitation at residential care facilities serving older adults and people with disabilities. The PHO follows a recent update from the Centers for Medicaid Service (CMS).
The revised guidance provides updates regarding indoor visitation, indoor visitation during an outbreak, core principles of COVID-19 infection prevention, outdoor visitation, visitor testing and vaccination, and compassionate care visits.
The visitation guidance allows for increased and more meaningful visitation for residents who have been vaccinated. Indoor visitation should be limited for:
- Unvaccinated residents, if the nursing home’s COVID-19 county positivity rate is greater than 10% and less than 70% of the residents in the facility are fully vaccinated.
- Residents with confirmed COVID-19 infection, whether vaccinated or unvaccinated, until they have met the criteria to discontinue Transmission-Based Precautions per CDC guidance.
- Residents in quarantine, whether vaccinated or unvaccinated until they have met the criteria for release from quarantine.
- If a resident is fully vaccinated, the resident can choose to have close contact (including touch) with their visitor while wearing a well-fitting face mask and cleaning their hands before and after.
Read the summary of changes here.
“The new visitation guidelines are a milestone for our residential care facilities as we continue to move towards a new normal. The last year has been extremely difficult and this step forward has been a long time in the making. I am optimistic about this guidance, as well as the continued vaccination in our residential care facilities to ensure that residents have both physical safety and good mental health,” said Randy Kuykendall, Director, Health Facilities and EMS Division, CDPHE.
The current guidance does not factor in visitor vaccination status. As COVID-19 vaccinations continue to become available to more members of the public, visitors of facilities are encouraged to get vaccinated when they have the opportunity to allow residents to be as safe as possible.
Continue to stay up to date by visiting covid19.colorado.gov/ltcf.