Effective tomorrow, Friday, March 29 at 7 am, temporary visitor restrictions will be lifted at all Wake Forest Baptist Health inpatient locations:
- Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center
- Wake Forest Baptist Health – Davie Medical Center
- Wake Forest Baptist Health – High Point Medical Center
- Wake Forest Baptist Health – Lexington Medical Center
- Wake Forest Baptist Health – Wilkes Medical Center
The visitor restrictions for children age 12 and under have been in place since Feb. 8 to help control the spread of flu.
“The rates of influenza have steadily declined in our area in the past several weeks,” said Larry B. Givner, MD, professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Wake Forest Baptist Health. “We are continuing to monitoring the virus, but we feel it is appropriate to now lift these temporary visitor restrictions, so that healthy children can visit their loved ones who are patients at our hospitals.”
Before deciding to lift restrictions, infection prevention teams from Wake Forest Baptist and four other health systems – Atrium Health, Cone Health, Novant Health and Randolph Health – coordinated to make sure all were seeing similar downward trends in flu cases to warrant lifting restrictions at all hospitals.
These five health systems are lifting visitor restrictions at the same time and in the same way they enacted them in February because they share the same geographic area and have similar rates of influenza in the community.
The spread of influenza can be decreased by practicing good hand hygiene and staying home from school or work if experiencing fever.
As always, anyone coming to any of Wake Forest Baptist’s hospitals should be healthy – free from fever, cough, colds, or stomach virus symptoms – when visiting patients.
Media Contacts
Joe McCloskey, jmcclosk@wakehealth.edu 336-716-1273
Eryn Johnson, eryjohns@wakehealth.edu 336-713-8228