New York's expanded nursing home visitation guidelines take effect on Friday and the health department strongly recommends visitors take a rapid test before entering a facility.

St. Ann's Home in Rochester is one of many local long-term care facilities that are updating their visitation policies to reflect the new guidelines.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced these expanded protocols earlier this week. He says the health department will help in giving nursing homes COVID-19 tests so visitors can get tested on site.

In counties where the positivity rate is less than 5%, no testing would be required, but it is encouraged. If a county falls within 5 to 10%, testing would be needed within 72 hours of a visit.

If the positivity rate in a county is greater than 10%, then no visitors would be allowed except for compassionate care. Compassionate care visitors are for residents in hospice, end-of-life care, residents 100 years old or older, or who need more emotional support than usual.

During Thursday's Monroe County COVID-19 briefing, County Executive Adam Bello said he believes people can visit their loved ones safely again in nursing homes.

"Now that the vaccination is there and such a high rate of vaccinations have been taken by nursing home residents, I'm confident that this is the right thing to do, but it has to be coupled with testing. Testing really is how you can isolate cases and make sure you mitigate that spread and continue to protect those residents and also the staff who work in those buildings from spreading the virus," said Bello.

St. Ann's Home will be providing COVID-19 tests for visitors and if the positivity rate remains below 5%, families can visit their loved ones in the resident's room.

Nursing homes also cannot have visitors if they've had a positive COVID-19 case in the last 14 days. At St. Ann's, March 8 would mark 14 days since its last positive case and that's the tentative reopening date. 

The facility says its compassionate care visits will resume on Saturday. St. Ann's says if you believe your loved one qualifies for a compassionate care visit, you should call your social worker.

St. Ann's will start providing COVID-19 tests for visitors starting on March 1 so that loved ones can get their results ahead of the day the nursing home can reopen.