Updated CDC COVID-19 Community Level Guidance

 

To: Residential care facilities (nursing homes, assisted living facilities, group homes, and intermediate care facilities)   From: Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment Infection Prevention Program and Residential Care Strike Team    CDC updated guidance about COVID-19 community levels along with recommended individual and household-precautions and community-level prevention strategies that should be taken at each level. The rationale for these changes are described in the guidance.   These COVID-19 community level recommendations do not apply in healthcare settings, such as hospitals and nursing homes. Healthcare settings should continue to follow CDC’s infection prevention and control recommendations for healthcare settings, which continue to use community transmission levels as a metric for stratifying some infection prevention and control (IPC) measures (e.g., use of source control, screening testing). CDC will add a banner at the top of the healthcare IPC pages to emphasize this point. Even with this banner, there might be confusion amongst residents, visitors, and healthcare personnel about these updates and the ongoing importance of source control and other prevention measures in healthcare settings.    Please continue to follow the RCF Mitigation Guidance document listed on the CDPHE website. If your facility has questions about infection prevention and control recommendations, please reach out to the CDPHE teams for assistance.   Infection Prevention Program  cdphe_covid_infection_prevention@state.co.us   Residential Care Strike Team residentialcarestriketeam@state.co.us