On Monday, Julie Schuller got the email she's been dreading ever since the new coronavirus first appeared in Washington.
"My family and I have been worried from the start," she said.
She found out that The Gardens at Juanita Bay, the senior and assisted living home where her 94-year-old mother resides, reported its first possible case of COVID-19.
The community is a half-mile away from Life Care Center, the long-term care facility at the center of the country's largest outbreak of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
"It's a terrible feeling, it really is," she said.
Transforming Age, the company that owns the senior community, reported that a resident was taken to the Seattle VA Medical Hospital on Friday March 6 with flu-like symptoms. Initial screenings showed that resident had tested presumptive positive for the coronavirus.
In a statement to KING 5, Transforming Age President & Chief Executive Officer Torsten Hirche said that The Gardens at Juanita Bay said that the facility has been taking "extreme precautions" to limit exposure in the community and that the company is "working directly with King County Health Department, Washington State Department of Public Health and the CDC to limit the risk to residents and staff members."
In an email sent to residents and family members, the community outlined its containment plan, which included suspending group meals and delivering meals to residents, restricting visitors and outside vendors, and daily screenings of residents for signs of illness.
The containment plan also urges residents to stay inside and limit interaction with visitors, suggesting they connect with their family and friends through phone calls and video messaging.
Schuller says she was already limiting her once-a-week lunches with her mother to daily phone calls and no physical contact.
Her mother has been living at the facility for six years and says she goes on outings to different stores with other residents. Schuller is worried that the new containment plan is too little too late.
"We feel that it should have been stronger from the beginning."
According to Transforming Age, the resident with the presumptive positive infection of the new coronavirus is in the hospital in stable condition.