Nursing home in Lebanon has 55 virus cases
Results are from a series of tests starting with a single positive on April 5.
A Warren County
LEBANON — nursing home has reported 55 COVID-19 cases since April involving 39 residents and 16 staffers, according to the Warren County Health Department.
CedarView Nursing Care and Rehabilitation Center, an 83-bed skilled nursing care facility on Oregonia Road in Lebanon, reported the cases to the Warren County
Health Department.
The CedarView results are from a series of tests starting with a single positive test on April 5. After several more positive results, all other staff and residents were tested, according to Warren County Health Commissioner Duane Stansbury.
There were 16 people who tested positive who did not have any symptoms.
“That could be the reason it
continued to spread at that facility,” Stansbury said.
Since the start of the outbreak in Ohio, there have been 26,357 total cases recorded, 4,718 hospi
talizations and 1,534 deaths from COVID-19. This includes 252 cases, 41 hospitalizations and 13 deaths in Warren County.
State data show 37 resi- dent and 11 staff cases were new this week at CedarView. Ohio reports the nursing home data on a weekly basis.
Stansbury said employees who tested positive are stay- ing home. Residents are isolated in their rooms.
State directives prohibit Stansbury from indicating whether there had been any deaths among the Cedar- View cases, he said.
“It’s clearly a serious problem. They are doing all the right things,” he said.
Elliot Polsky, administra- tor at CedarView, couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday.
Statewide in long-term care facilities, 1,873 new and 4,091 total resident cases have been reported since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the Ohio Department of Health.
The Ohio Department of Health in late April expanded its definition of who was a priority for testing to now include people with no symp- toms in long-term care facil- ities with outbreaks.
Previous guidance was for the state health department to give five tests per long-term care facility and facilities had been relying on whether they have relationships with other organi- zations like hospitals to get access to more testing. Many facilities are still reporting spotty access with trying to get enough tests for staff and residents.
The data about COVID-19 cases both in the community and in long-term care facilities is emerging and far from complete, according to an article posted on April 24 by researcher Emily Muttillo with The Center for Community Solutions, a Cleve- land-based human services think tank.
She wrote that the data recently released by the Ohio Department of Health includes the number of COVID-19 cases identified in both staff and residents as of April 21, but doesn’t include in its count residents and staff who have either recovered or died prior to that date.
Because this dataset does not include all cases originating in long-term care facilities, the total number of Ohio cases of COVID-19 originating in residents and staff of long-term care facilities is still unknown, Muttillo wrote.
The state is reporting the number of cases originating in long-term care facilities, including nursing homes, assisted living and intermediate care facilities, but not reporing independent senior housing or subsidized senior buildings.
More than 23,000 people in the U.S. have died in longterm care and nursing home facilities since the first coronavirus outbreak in a nursing home was reported in Washington state in February, according to The Associated Press.
On March 13, federal officials limited visits to essential health care workers and told facilities to halt communal dining and group activities and screen staff for fevers or cough. Many of the outbreaks have come since then, including in California, Texas, Minnesota and West Virginia, among other states.
In most cases, it’s impossible to confirm how the disease was brought in or how long it was at a facility before manifesting itself in patients or workers. But with families and vendors barred, and many residents not allowed out of their rooms, most circulating comes from workers tending to patients.
Other than CedarView, The Sheridan House in Mason, with 13 resident and five staff cases, had the most confirmed in Warren County, according to the Ohio Department of Health.
Earlier this week, Otterbein SeniorLife reported its first resident to have tested positive for the new virus, as they tested every resident and employee in buildings on their main campus, west of Lebanon. Residents in patio homes and houses are not being tested, but are in self isolation as part of strict precautions there.
A west Dayton church on Monday will offer free drivethru coronavirus testing.
McKinley United Meth- odist Church will have the drive-thru coronavirus testing from 1 to 5 p.m. in the church’s parking lot, located at 196 Hawthorn St.
The coronavirus testing is available to anyone, said McKinley United Methodist Pastor Peter Matthews.
“We wanted to get testing on the west side, given the disparities in testing for peo- ple of color,” Matthews said. “We wanted to make every option available.”
The testing will be done by Primary Health Solutions, a nonprofit federally quali- fied health care center. Stephen Roller, the chief operating officer and chief clinical officer of Primary Health Solutions, said the coronavirus testing at McKinley United Methodist Church will be the first of many test- ings in Dayton. Future testing locations and dates will be determined later, but could include testings at McKinley United Methodist Church again, at other churches on the west side of Dayton or at the Primary Health Solutions office at 300 Forest Ave., near the Grandview Medical Center.
Roller said he and his team can test between 60 and 80 people in four hours.
The nasal swab test is then sent off to a lab. Roller said it takes between 48 and 72 hours to get results.
Roller said patients should call 937-535-5060 to do a vir- tual visit and get the necessary doctor’s order before they get tested for coronavi- rus. If someone comes to the drive-thru testing and hasn’t gotten a doctor’s order, they can do that on-site on Monday, he said.
Patients should bring a photo ID and an insurance card. Roller said everyone who comes will be tested, even if they are uninsured.
“We’re going to see patients irregardless of their ability to pay,” Roller said.
Roller said it was important to Primary Health Solutions to do testing in the west side of Dayton because the black and Latino communities have been dispro- portionately affected by the coronavirus.
“This has brought to the forefront the disparities in our communities,” Matthews said. “It’s my moral obligation as a pastor in the community to make sure people in our com- munity are safe because if we don’t take care of ourselves it doesn’t appear anyone else will.”
Matthews said the faith community has had to adapt in these trying times.
“The church must re-imagine itself in these unprecedented times to know that who we are and what we’re about is bigger than a building,” Matthews said. “The arms and legs of Christ are immediately available to people with their backs against the wall. What these discrepancies have shown is it is primarily persons of color who have found themselves historically at the short end of the stick. This provides us an opportunity to be bigger than a building.”