Covid-19 update: Long-term-care visits will come with restrictions

Video from Health and Family Services Secretary Eric Friedlander runs 5 minutes and 35 seconds.

If you plan to visit a long-term-care facility in Kentucky as visitation reopens, be prepared to follow some tight restrictions. Visitation opens Monday, June 29 for personal-care homes, assisted-living communities and family-care homes, and July 15 for skilled nursing facilities.

Visitors will have to schedule in advance, no more than two people can visit a time, they must be socially distanced, and they won't be in patients' rooms. Facilities must have a designated visitation room near the main entrance or outdoors so the area can be sanitized between visits. Inside visitors must be masked, and will be screened for possible signs of covid-19.

“This is done balancing needs of individuals, needs of families, needs of folks in these facilities themselves to start seeing each other again,” Health and Family Services Secretary Eric Friedlander said in an online message.

Visitation is resuming after "three months of forced isolation," notes the Lexington Herald-Leader. "Residents who mostly have been confined to their rooms since March will be able to resume some group activities and communal dining in their facilities.:

Most of Kentucky's deaths from covid-19 have been among residents of long-term-care facilities, and a few nursing homes have lost "close to a quarter of their populations," the Herald-Leader notes. "A spike in cases announced Friday at a nursing home in Corbin shows the facilities remain potentially vulnerable."

There are other restrictions. Before they can allow visitors and resume group activities, the facilities that can start Monday must have gone two weeks without a new coronavirus infection, and those starting July 15 start date must have gone four weeks.

In other covid-19 news Saturday:

• The Herald-Leader's Liz Moomey reports on the reopening of the free Red Bird Clinic in northern Bell County, closed for three months due to the pandemic. Renovations allow it to see as many as before, and accommodate University of Louisville dental students in the fall.
• People needing help with unemployment claims can make appointments for next week in Frankfort from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.; and for Monday or Tuesday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. local time at community colleges in Owensboro and Grayson. Appointments can be made at kcc.ky.gov and going to the In-Person UI Services "View Services" button. Assistance is also available at through the website's "Chat Now" button or by calling 502-564-2900.