5/21/2021 Update: Lyngblomsten community grateful as life slowly returns to normal for residents, tenants, and visitors

May 21, 2021

In recent days, there have been several encouraging developments related to the COVID-19 pandemic.  More than half of Minnesotans ages 16 and older are now fully vaccinated, the state’s number of active cases has been steadily declining, and last week, Governor Tim Walz lifted the statewide mask mandate for Minnesotans in most situations.

For the Lyngblomsten community, we too have been experiencing positive developments over the last month-and-a-half as life has slowly been returning to normal for our residents, tenants, and visitors.  Changes that have happened include:

• Fully vaccinated* residents and tenants do not need to wear facemasks or practice social distancing (i.e., remain six feet apart from others) when interacting with other fully vaccinated residents and tenants.
• Fully vaccinated residents and tenants do not need to wear facemasks or practice social distancing when visiting with a fully vaccinated family member/friend in their room.  While visiting, these fully vaccinated family members/friends also do not need to wear facemasks or practice social distancing.

Employees (including those who are fully vaccinated) continue to wear facemasks when interacting with residents and tenants on our campus.

Lyngblomsten has been implementing these changes as it has received new guidance from federal and state health agencies, including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH).

**A fully vaccinated individual has received the complete dosing regimen for a vaccine (two doses for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, one dose for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine) and two weeks have elapsed from the final dose.

Campus vaccination rates remain strong

Another positive development has centered around our organization’s vaccination efforts.  As of May 21, 2021:

• 95 percent of care center residents are fully vaccinated
• 87 percent of tenants from the Lyngblomsten Apartments are fully vaccinated
• 100 percent of tenants from The Heritage at Lyngblomsten are fully vaccinated
• 82 percent of care center employees are fully vaccinated—an increase from 75 percent in late March and an amount that continues to be greater than the average rate for other facilities in the state

These percentages have fluctuated slightly over the last several weeks as individuals have been admitted to/discharged from the care center, moved into/moved out from our housing buildings, or begun/ended their employment with Lyngblomsten.  Of the four groups referenced, only the vaccination rate for tenants at the Lyngblomsten Apartments has decreased (in late March, it was 89 percent).

We are blessed to be able to offer the vaccine to any new residents, tenants, or employees who join our community thanks to a partnership with Cassia, another senior care provider in the Twin Cities.  Every Wednesday since early May, we’ve held a clinic on campus, and we currently have no end date planned.

Indoor Visits temporarily paused

While these changes are most welcome as they signal life “returning to normal” for our community, we know from recent experience that we aren’t out of the woods quite yet.  On April 24, we identified a new case of COVID-19 in a care center employee, and since then, we’ve identified four more employee cases.  All but two of these cases have resolved, meaning we currently have two active employee cases.  Residents have been tested weekly during this time period and, thankfully, none of their test results have come back positive.

Due to these cases, indoor visits for the care center (which occurred uninterrupted for most of the month of April) have been on pause for four weeks.  We hope to be able to restart indoor visits for non–Essential Caregivers later this month when conditions allow.  Until then, care center residents are able to participate in essential caregiver visits, indoor visits in our Newman-Benson Chapel, outdoor visits, virtual visits, and more.

Update on our cumulative number of cases

Finally, an update on our number of cumulative cases.  As we shared on March 26 and January 20, every Thursday MDH updates a list that identifies senior care facilities that have had at least one confirmed case of COVID-19 since the pandemic began in early 2020.  For each facility, the list tabulates the cumulative number of COVID cases in care center residents and senior housing tenants, the number of cases in staff (including contract employees), and the number of deaths in residents and tenants.

We’ve been checking this list regularly and recently discovered that MDH’s number of resident deaths for the Lyngblomsten Care Center is one more than what we had been reporting in our weekly letters to care center residents, housing tenants, their families, and our employees.  As we’ve shared in previous posts, this discrepancy likely is due to MDH adding to its list one of our deceased residents who has COVID-19 listed somewhere on their death certificate, even though we determined this individual had recovered from the virus using the latest clinical guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  So, we are now reporting 51 care center resident deaths (instead of 50) and 99 resident recoveries (instead of 100).

We press on with hope

In the coming weeks as pandemic conditions likely continue to improve, we expect federal and state health agencies to continue to relax COVID policies and procedures for senior care facilities.  We miss you—members of the Lyngblomsten family—and are optimistic that, more and more, we will return to the level of engagement with each other that we previously enjoyed.