Samaritan Medical Center Pauses Inpatient Visitation and Emergency Department Support Persons Due to Recent Increase of Regional COVID-19 Positive Cases

Published on: October 26, 2020

WATERTOWN, NY – Samaritan Medical Center is compelled to pause inpatient visitation and Emergency Department (ED) support persons because of the recent increase in positive cases in the local region. This takes effect today, Monday, October 26, 2020. This is out of an abundance of caution to minimize additional people in the hospital to keep patients and staff safe. We are attempting to notify inpatient families at this time.

We will continually reevaluate local data and determine when we can safely re-implement inpatient visitation and ED support persons.
This pause in visitation does not impact our end-of-life patients, patients under the age of 18, nursery/neonatal intensive care unit patients or patients that require a support person due to an intellectual and/or developmental disability (I/DD) or a cognitive impairment, including dementia. These visitors need to continue to use the Rotunda entrance at the hospital. This does not impact our obstetrics/maternity patients and their active labor and recovery support person. These patients need to continue to use the Car-Freshner Center for Women and Children entrance.

To see all other visitation policies and protocols, please click here and understand that these are likely to change as the pandemic shifts.