Congregate Care Settings
Long term care, shelters, recovery centers, and other group settings

This page contains guidance and downloadable resources to help prevent the spread of infectious various congregate care facilities.

For additional questions or concerns, contact the NKY Health Epidemiology Department.

Preventing the Spread of Disease

There are many steps that can be taken to prevent the spread of disease.

Hand Washing

Proper hand hygiene is key to stopping the spread of disease. Click below for more hand washing information and resources.

Click here to learn more about proper hand hygiene.


Cleaning Procedures

There are specific cleaning and disinfection techniques that are proven to reduce the spread of illness in child care facilities. 

Click here to learn more about proper cleaning and disinfection guidelines.


Use of PPE

Use of proper PPE and following universal precautions helps protect staff from exposures and can reduce the spread of disease from ill patients or residents. 

Click here to learn more about use of proper PPE and when to use contact precautions.

Universal/Standard Precautions

Universal or Standard precautions are actions that can be taken in any healthcare or group setting to help prevent the spread of disease. They include items such as regular hand washing, use of PPE when providing routine care, cleaning and disinfection techniques, proper cough technique, and others. 

Click here to learn more about universal/standard precautions.

Outbreak Guidance

All outbreaks should be reported to the NKY Health Epidemiology team. Please visit the reporting page to learn more.

Click here to learn more about how to respond to an outbreak.

Reporting Diseases

Reporting of diseases is most often done by healthcare providers after the diagnosis of a disease. Long-term care medical settings should contact NKY Health with any reportable disease diagnoses.

902 KAR 2:065 requires long-term care facilities to report an outbreak, 2 or more cases of  the same illness within 24 hours to the local health department. Copies of 902 KAR 2:065 are available upon request. For respiratory illness's this is positive cases of Influenza, COVID, or RSV, occurring in a single long-term care facility during a one week period. 

When reporting outbreaks send a line list of all ill persons to the Epidemiology team, via fax at 859.363.2057. Line lists should be sent daily to allow for proper monitoring, care, and response.

For information on disease reporting including how to contact the NKY Health Epidemiology department, visit our reporting page.