For current CDC guidelines please visit CDC COVID guidelines
How to Protect Yourself and Others
Wash your hands often
- Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds especially after you have been in a public place, or after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing.
- It’s especially important to wash:
- Before eating or preparing food
- Before touching your face
- After using the restroom
- After leaving a public place
- After blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing
- After handling your mask
- After changing a diaper
- After caring for someone sick
- After touching animals or pets
- If soap and water are not readily available, use a hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol. Cover all surfaces of your hands and rub them together until they feel dry.
- Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands.
Cover coughs and sneezes
- Always cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when you cough or sneeze or use the inside of your elbow and do not spit.
- Throw used tissues in the trash.
- Immediately wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. If soap and water are not readily available, clean your hands with a hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol.
Clean and disinfect
- Clean AND disinfect frequently touched surfaces per current recommendations. This includes tables, doorknobs, light switches, countertops, handles, desks, phones, keyboards, toilets, faucets, and sinks.
- If surfaces are dirty, clean them. Use detergent or soap and water prior to disinfection.
- Then, use a household disinfectant. Use products from EPA’s List N: Disinfectants for Coronavirus (COVID-19)external icon according to manufacturer’s labeled directions.
Monitor Your Health Daily
- Be alert for symptoms. Watch for fever, cough, shortness of breath, or other symptoms of COVID-19.
- Take your temperature if symptoms develop.
- Don’t take your temperature within 30 minutes of exercising or after taking medications that could lower your temperature, like acetaminophen.
- Follow CDC guidance if symptoms develop.
Get Vaccinated to Protect Against COVID-19
- COVID-19 vaccination is especially important for people who may be more likely to get very sick from COVID-19, such as older adults and people with certain medical conditions.
- People with underlying medical conditions may get a COVID-19 vaccine as long as they have not had a severe or immediate allergic reaction to the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine or any of the ingredients in a COVID-19 vaccine. CDC has made recommendations on who should get vaccinated first.
What to Expect During your visit
PRE-VISIT SCREENING
All patients will be screened via a phone call prior to visits or upon arrival prior to treatment. Your clinician will ask you the following 3 screening questions:
- 1 – Travel: Have you traveled internationally within the last 14 days to a country with sustained community transmission? {yes/no}
- 2 – Exposure: In the last 14 days, have you had contact with someone diagnosed with COVID-19, under investigation for COVID-19, or with a respiratory illness? {yes/no}
- 3 – Symptoms: Do you have signs or symptoms of COVID-19, such as fever, chills, cough, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, fatigue, muscle or body aches, headache, new loss of taste or smell, sore throat, congestion, runny nose, nausea, vomiting or diarrhea? {yes/no}
We kindly ask each patient to follow the below guidelines during their visits:
- 1 – Physical Distancing: (ONLY applies to unvaccinated or + COVID symptoms) Anyone else living in the home must leave the room while you are there for your visit, preferably 15 minutes prior to your arrival so the air can be cleared. If patients require translation and need a caregiver in the room, ask that they stand 6 feet away from you and the patient, if space permits. If caregivers need teaching, try to do so over the phone after your visit.
- 2 – Covering Face: (ONLY applies to unvaccinated or + COVID symptoms) Ask your patient to cover their mouth with a mask, bandana, t-shirt or tea towel during your visit. (ALL) Recommend patient/caregivers cover their mouth with a mask, bandana, t-shirt or tea towel during your visit but it is not required unless requested by the treating clinician.
- 3 – Daily Temperature Checks: (ONLY applies to unvaccinated or + COVID symptoms) Educate your patients and their caregivers to check their temperature on a daily basis and keep a log.
Patients will be screened over the phone prior to the arrival of the treating clinician or upon arrival prior to treatment.
Information on this website provided by: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/prevention.html