October 21, 2020

Many people have asked us what they can do to support our elders or help OES Home during this time. The most important thing you can do to help and protect our elders is to follow Governor DeWine's directives to stay at home as much as possible even if you don't have symptoms and quarantine yourself if you do have any symptoms. This is so incredibly important to help our elders for a number of reasons:

When more people are active in the community, the risk of the virus spreading to our staff members increases significantly. We desperately need our staff to be healthy and have reduced exposure to the virus, because if we find that an employee has been exposed to the virus, they must be quarantined and cannot return to work for at least 14 days. Your local healthcare facility staff are working very hard to protect your loved ones and keep them safe, so please help protect them in return!

Additionally, more activity will only spread the virus further and more quickly, increasing the risk of it reaching our elders. The sooner everyone reduces their activity and practices self-isolation, the sooner this pandemic will pass. If people continue to move about the community, gather in groups, and travel, this pandemic will last much longer and the effect on our healthcare system will be much worse. Keep in mind that our elders cannot have any visitors until this pandemic passes, and they would like to return to their normal lives as quickly as possible.

And finally, please keep in mind that with cases of the virus filling our hospitals, there will be less access for our elders and other individuals in the community who experience life-threatening events such as stroke or heart attacks. So please, for the sake of our elders and the vulnerable ones in our community, practice social distancing and monitor for exposure and signs or symptoms as much as possible.

Thank you for your cooperation and we appreciate any efforts that you make to protect our staff and our elders. We will all get through this but we need your help to do so!