Community Update for the Week of 7/18/2022

July 19, 2022

Update to Residents on 7/19/2022

COVID is Still With Us — Lorain County Positivity Rate is now 17.75%

According to the CDC, the number of people who test positive for COVID continues to climb in Lorain County and throughout the State. Please continue to use caution and be aware when out in public.

We are upholding our policy of masks in Heiser corridors, and the auditorium. When meeting in small groups, do consider the willingness of participants to remain masked and protect one another. With more residents and staff showing up positive, particularly after travel we urge you to recognize the risks you bring back to Kendal. Don’t hesitate to be tested, particularly if you have symptoms you usually associate with your allergies, or being “minor.” Often the positive tests are showing up days later than expected.

CVSHealth is looking for participants in a Cognitive Study

Kendal’s Dementia Education Group suggested we share this opportunity:

Did you know that changes in the brain may occur 10-20 years before any symptoms of Alzheimer’s appear? A clinical trial is studying whether an investigational medicine may stop or slow down memory and thinking problems related to Alzheimer’s disease. The trial is called TRAILBLAZER-ALZ 3, and it is sponsored by Eli Lilly and Company. If you or a loved one may be able to help advance Alzheimer’s clinical research by joining the TRAILBLAZER-ALZ 3 study. You may receive compensation for your time and travel. The study does not require health insurance to participate. To find out if you  qualify for this study, please take this “PRE-QUALIFY” questionnaire or call 1-844-826-2858 to learn more.

2022 Kendal Corporation Annual Report Available

As I shared at our Coffee Hour last week, we have a limited number of printed copies of the 2022 Kendal Corp. Annual Report. Afterall, we favor “green practices” at KaO. Just pick up a copy near the open mailboxes and return it once read for someone else. Here is President and CEO Sean Kelly’s intro message:

What a year 2021 was for all of us! Throughout it, we continued to persevere through what remains of the pandemic and faced many major historical moments, and despite if not because of them, together, we emerged stronger.

During this time, we – the Kendal family – found strength in each other and in those around us. Guided always by our values, we rose to challenges by bringing new and innovative approaches to our work that furthered our momentum. We focused inwardly on our teams, on those in our care and their loved ones, and simultaneously trained our focus outwardly on building new partnerships and growing existing ones. Importantly, we also made amazing strides in codifying and prioritizing our efforts in diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.

We hope you’ll notice, as demonstrated in the stories and details you’ll read in this report, how firmly we leaned in on our values in concert with this year’s themes of Unity, Knowledge and Imagination, in order to grow with intentional focus on staff development and resident experience.

We truly are living our mission of Together, transforming the experience of aging!^®

Thank you for continuing to take this journey with us and seeing all that we can achieve. I hope you feel that your hard work is reflected in this report and that the part you played in the Kendal story this past year has helped us reach a new level of togetherness.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE 2022 KENDAL CORPORATION ANNUAL REPORT

KaO Fourth of July Video Link

If you were not able to take part in the uplifting July Fourth Parade and Program that followed, you can watch it at your leisure with this YouTube link. Special appreciation goes to Joyce Benjamin for creating this keepsake. It is a restricted video rather than a public one so you will need this link to view it: https://youtu.be/kW1EKPt1RaI

No KORA Council meeting this week

President Mary Behm reports that she is keeping the tradition of KORA Council taking off in July. So, if you had planned to attend this Thursday, you now have the morning off! 

WorxHub training

Facility Services will be conducting a WorxHub training for any residents and staff who would like to learn how to use WorxHub — on Wednesday, July 27 at 2:00 p.m. in the Training Room in the Education Building. Training will last one hour (or less). No sign up is necessary. For more information, please contact Dagney Engler at (440) 775-9837 or dengler@kao.kendal.org.

Parking Lot 1 & 2 Update

The concrete floor was poured on Friday, and the four-bay area on the west side of Lot 2 was poured on Monday. The two-bay unit should be poured today or tomorrow.  

Dining Update

Greg Zehe, Director of Hospitality Services & Assoc. Administrator

Resident Volunteers Needed! 

We are working with Grobe’s and other local farms to coordinate the return of the Kendal community weekly produce sale. An essential component of the market is the resident volunteers who serve as clerks and cashiers. The produce stand will be open on Fridays from 11:00am to 1:30pm and we plan to begin on July 29. Please contact Priscilla Steinberg if you are willing to help. Thank you!

Covid Statistics and News

Governor Mike DeWine’s regular COVID Press Conferences: https://ohiochannel.org

BA.5 should not change how Americans think about living with covid

(from The Washington Post, Leana Wen, MD)

A new variant of the coronavirus, even more contagious than previous strains, is now dominant in the United States. But rising cases should not prompt calls for most Americans to hunker down or policymakers to reimpose restrictions. Instead, the rapid spread of the BA.5 omicron subvariant is a window into what the future with this coronavirus looks like.  We’ve seen this pattern before. The original omicron variant was more contagious than the delta variant before it and quickly became dominant last winter. There was a brief lull, after which that strain was replaced by a more contagious subvariant, BA.2. Infections caused by BA.2 have started decreasing, just in time for subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 to take over…Lulls followed by surges are the new normal. Instead of reacting with alarm, health officials should set the expectation that as long as hospitals are not overwhelmed and vaccines still work to prevent severe illness, policies should focus on minimizing disruption to daily life.

Virologist and pediatrician Paul Offit agrees. Offit is the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the Food and Drug Administration’s influential advisory committee on vaccines. He told me in an interview that this coronavirus “will be here for my lifetime, my children’s lifetimes, and their children’s lifetimes.” He added, “We can’t keep forever masking and quarantining to prevent asymptomatic infection; we have to accept mild illness as a part of life with covid-19.”  His goal, which I share, is to prevent people from becoming severely ill. For most people, vaccines are doing that well, including against BA.5. Hospitalizations are increasing, but they are about one-fifth of the peak of the first omicron wave. Since the true number of infections could be up to 10 times higher than the reported number, this means vaccines are doing their job and decoupling infection from severe illness…

I don’t think the pandemic is over. This coronavirus could have many more surprises in the years ahead. This fall, or the next, a new variant could emerge that’s much more lethal and that does not respond to existing vaccines and treatments. Health officials need to preserve their credibility to call for an emergency response when it’s truly needed. That time is not now with the BA.5 variant.

Read more:   https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/13/ba5-omicron-variant-living-with-covid/ 

Colonoscopy After 75: A Potential Lifesaver

(From WebMD, shared by Don Parker)  

If you’re over 75, being screened for colon cancer could save your life, a new study says.  …the influential U.S. Preventive Services Task Force lowered the recommended age to begin colon cancer screening from 50 to 45 for people without a family history of colon cancer, but did not change its advice to halt routine screening at age 75.

After that age, the decision to be screened can be based on a person’s health and risk factors, but there has been little firm evidence for or against the recommendation to stop routine screening at age 75. Here is the full article: https://www.webmd.com/colorectal-cancer/news/20210521/colonoscopy-after-75-a-potential-lifesaver

Georgia Newman, Medical Director adds, “As with mammograms, the decision to continue screening is based on the general health of the patient, and the wish to continue screening. It is an individual decision.” Please discuss with your physician or nurse practitioner your options for health screenings and what s/he would recommend based on your health and risks.