Guidelines have been released allowing indoor nursing home and other long-term health care facility visits.

The Department of Health and Environmental Control said that in some cases “compassionate care visits” must be allowed regardless of visitation policies.

Compassionate care visits put the emotional well-being of residents 1st.

For example, if a resident is in an end-of-life situation, showing signs of distress or depression or grieving a recent family member’s death, compassionate care visits are allowed.

In other situations, indoor and outdoor visits may be permitted with some limitations.

This does not mean all nursing homes will immediately allow indoor visits.

But once they meet certain criteria, they can allow indoor visits.

Each facility must establish its policy and leth residents' family members know.

Facilities must establish a schedule for visits so appointments are made in advance.

That will allow them to stagger visitors and assure all involved stick to the guidelines.

Indoor visits will still be limited to 30 minutes and only 2 visit at a time.

Visitors must be screened for symptoms of covid-19, wear a face covering, social distance and use proper hand hygiene.

Some residents will not be allowed to have visitors.

Residents quarantined due to a covid-19 diagnosis or who are showing symptoms of may not have visitors except in “compassionate care” situations.

DHEC says facilities may prohibit visits if “a reasonable clinical or safety cause is present.” Those include a facility’s covid-19 status, a resident having covid-19 and the county where the facility has a positivity rate above 10%.