At this time, we do have confirmed cases within Lee county. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have recommended a variety of steps that we are implementing to help reduce the potential for the virus to spread. However, we need your help in battling COVID-19. Below are some examples of how you can help protect yourself, your loved ones, and caregivers, as well as prevent the spread throughout the community.

Following Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) guidance, staff from Cypress at Home might ask you about:

1. International travel within the last 14 days to countries with sustained community transmission. For updated information on affected countries visit: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019- ncov/
2. Signs or symptoms of a respiratory infection, such as a fever, cough, and sore throat.
3. Contact within the last 14 days with someone with or under investigation for COVID-19, or are ill with respiratory illness.
4. Residing in a community where community-based spread of COVID-19 is occurring.

To protect your health, staff of Cypress at Home who have signs and symptoms of a respiratory infection are not permitted to report to work.

For your family members and friends, we ask that they don’t visit you if they have any symptoms of respiratory illness. Those symptoms include cough, fever, sore throat, runny nose, and/or shortness of breath. We understand that connecting with loved ones is incredibly important, and there are a variety of other ways you might consider connecting with them. These may include telephone, email, text, or through Skype or Facebook. Let us know how we can help facilitate communication.

If you do develop respiratory illness symptoms or are diagnosed with COVID-19, the CDC has released recommended precautions for household members, intimate partners, and caregivers who interact with a patient in a non-healthcare setting, such as your home. You may want to share these with your family, friends, and visitors:

• Make sure that they understand and can help you follow your healthcare provider’s instructions for medication(s) and care. They can help with basic needs in the home and provide support for getting groceries, prescriptions, and other personal needs.
• If you have any symptoms of respiratory illness, they can help monitor your symptoms. If you’re getting sicker, they should call your healthcare provider and tell them if you have laboratory confirmed COVID-19. This will help the healthcare provider’s office take steps to keep other people in the office or waiting room from getting infected. Ask the healthcare provider to call the local or state health department for additional guidance. If the you have a medical emergency and you need to call 911, notify the dispatch personnel that you have, or are being evaluated for COVID-19.
• Household members should stay in another room or be separated from you as much as possible. Household members should use a separate bedroom and bathroom, if available.
• Prohibit visitors who do not have an essential need to be in the home.
• Household members should care for any pets in the home. Do not handle pets or other animals while sick.
• Make sure that shared spaces in the home have good air flow, such as by an air conditioner or an opened window, weather permitting.
• Perform hand hygiene frequently. Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains 60 to 95% alcohol, covering all surfaces of your hands and rubbing them together until they feel dry. Soap and water should be used preferentially if hands are visibly dirty. • Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands.
• Avoid sharing household items. You should not share dishes, drinking glasses, cups, eating utensils, towels, bedding, or other items. After you or visitors use these items, they should wash them thoroughly.
• Clean all “high-touch” surfaces, such as counters, tabletops, doorknobs, bathroom fixtures, toilets, phones, keyboards, tablets, and bedside tables, every day. Also, clean any surfaces that may have blood, stool, or body fluids on them.
• Use a household cleaning spray or wipe, according to the label instructions. Labels contain instructions for safe and effective use of the cleaning product including precautions you should take when applying the product, such as wearing gloves and making sure you have good ventilation during use of the product.
• Wash laundry thoroughly.

Cypress at Home is following the recommendations of the CDC on prevention steps, including following strict hand-washing procedures, and in many circumstances, wearing gowns and gloves when interacting with patients who are sick. We also are following CDC recommendations as they are updated. In addition, our leadership team is in close contact with the local and state health department and are following their guidance. We are notifying our staff and vendors of the symptoms of COVID-19 with a request that visitors not enter our buildings or patient’s homes if they are experiencing these symptoms.

We will notify you if any patients, families, volunteers, or staff are diagnosed with COVID-19. Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact us. For additional information, please visit the CDC’s coronavirus disease information page at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/

Thank you for trusting us with providing you the home health services your condition calls for at this time.