As Mississippi has now surpassed 10,000 total cases of COVID-19, Mississippi Veterans Affairs Executive Director Stacey Pickering is taking the necessary steps to prevent the virus from spreading in the state’s four veterans nursing homes.
Besides screening employees and other essential personnel before entering a home, Pickering has enforced the use of personal protective equipment, as well as limited movement between locations.
“We closed down all four of our homes to only our employees, and only essential personnel get to come and go from those homes,” Pickering said. “We’ve really restricted movement between the homes, and it has worked real well thus far.”
The precautionary actions seemingly are working as three of the four homes have remained COVID-free. The Jackson, Oxford, and Collins locations have not had any residents or employees test positive. However, the Kosciusko location has suffered from 44 total cases and one death.
“We did have an outbreak a couple of weeks ago in our home in Kosciusko,” Pickering said. “It came in through one wing and predominantly is isolated to that one wing, but we have 23 residents who did test positive, 21 staff. We’re putting a lot of energy and effort in managing and mitigating the impact in the home, protecting our negative residents…That’s our number one priority—to protect them”
To hear what else Pickering and his team are doing to protect veterans from COVID-19, check out the video below.
