Dear Sholom residents, tenants, staff and families,

Recently, the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) released new guidance regarding visitation in long term care, assisted living and independent senior living locations.

To provide a careful and strategic re-introduction of visitation to Sholom’s location, the guidance also provides senior care organizations with the discretion to restrict visitation due any of the following factors:

• COVID-19 positivity rate of surrounding county
• Resident’s COVID-19 status
• Visitor symptoms
• Visitor lack of adherence to proper infection control practices
• Or other relevant factors related to the COVID-19 public health emergency

At this time, because of COVID-19 positivity, in person visitation remains restricted at Sholom’s St. Louis Park Ackerberg Campus, Shaller Family Campus in St. Paul and Menorah Plaza locations.  Essential caregivers and compassionate visits are allowed per the new guidance. Please visit Sholom’s COVID-19 information and resources on www.sholom.com for further information on quarantine review dates by location.

Non-quarantined residents at all locations are allowed window visit and outdoor visits per Minnesota Department of Health guidelines.

In cooperation with the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH), Sholom has completed broad-based testing strategy for staff and residents in our skilled care centers and assisted living locations in order to prevent the further spread of COVID-19.  We are now regularly testing our staff and residents in our skilled care centers.

We will continue to test regularly with the frequency of testing determined by our surrounding counties’ infection rates.  This means when infection rates in our surrounding counties increases, frequency of COVID-19 testing will increase at Sholom’s locations.  Specifically, this could mean testing monthly increasing to testing every two weeks, testing weekly or two times per week.   We must test until we receive ALL negative tests for two consecutive test dates.

At our St. Louis Park location, Sholom Home West has two residents and six staff members with active, positive COVID-19.  Knollwood Place Apartments has one resident with active, positive COVID-19. Roitenberg Family Assisted Living, Hodroff Pavilion for Memory Care, Menorah Plaza and Menorah West have no active COVID-19 resident or staff cases.

Our Shaller Family Sholom East Campus in St. Paul has two staff members with confirmed cases of COVID-19 at Shirley Chapman Sholom Home East.  Bentson Family Assisted Living and Weinberg Apartments have no active cases of COVID-19 in staff or residents.

Our homecare and hospice team has no clients or staff with COVID-19.

For the most up to date information, please refer to https://www.sholom.com and click on the link:  COVID-19 updates and resources.  Information about essential caregivers, window and outdoor visits will be available here also.

Our priority is to keep everyone safe and healthy. Because of the high risk to our residents, MDH continues to recommend anyone over 70 years old to continue isolating at home, wearing masks and practice physical distancing as much as possible.

We need your partnership to get through this pandemic as a community.  We appreciate your continued support and patience as we strive to serve our community and loved ones.

Barbara Klick, RN, MBA

Sholom CEO