Southbury Training School suffers virus outbreak
COVID-19 has infected a quarter of residents, 84 staff members
A major COVID-19 outbreak at the Southbury Training School has infected a quarter of the residents, 84 employees and killed one longtime staff member.
Since Dec. 1, there have been 39 residents who have tested positive for COVID-19 and 84 staff members, according to the state Department of Developmental Services. There are 153 residents living full time at Southbury, and 25% have been infected in the past month. Last Tuesday, a 71-year-old male resident died of COVID-19 in Danbury Hospital, according to the state medical examiner’s office.
Over the course of the pandemic, 72 residents have contracted the disease and 121 staff members have tested positive for COVID-19. Overall two residents and four employees have died. There are 625 staff at the facility, which serves people with intellectual disabilities, nearly all of whom are elderly.
Arte Johnson, 58, who died on Dec. 29 at Griffin Hospital of COVID-19, had been on the staff since 1983. Johnson was working in Cottage No. 8.
His brother Carl Johnson said that Arte started not feeling well in mid-December and tested positive a few days later. He was quarantining at home when he became seriously ill and was transferred to the hospital.
“My brother was in good shape. He worked out all of the time,” Carl Johnson said. “That’s what shocked me: All of a sudden he ended up in the hospital.”
Arte Johnson started working at the Southbury Training School in
November of 1983 when it was a far different place with over 1,000 residents and over 40 cottages where individuals with intellectual disabilities lived. In 2015, the state legislature ordered it closed, and the number of residents has slowly dissipated either through deaths or people being placed elsewhere.
“It is with a heavy heart and great sadness that DDS confirms the loss of a member of the DDS family from COVID-19 last week,” Commissioner Jordan Scheff said in a statement. “Southbury Training School and the Department of Developmental Services has experienced extraordinary challenges in the face of a global pandemic. We are incredibly grateful for the perseverance and resilience of the DDS and private provider frontline staff that continue to show up every day to provide the highest quality service and support to individuals with intellectual disability. They are the true heroes of this public emergency.”
While there hasn’t been any determination how the virus spread at the training school, employees who talked on condition they not be named said they believe it was general laxness once the virus seemed to disappear in the summer.
Employees pointed to the decision in August to restart day services for residents, which meant people were coming onto the campus who had been barred in the spring, or residents were going to jobs or programs in the communities.
The day service programs were expanded until October when the virus took off again all through the state.
“When we had the first round of COVID, it was as safe as possible. We didn’t have the rampage we are having now,” one longtime employee said. “There’s no question it is much worse this time.”
DDS has implemented numerous mitigation efforts at Southbury to monitor and control the spread of the virus.
These efforts include enhanced PPE distribution, including the utilization of N-95 masks, creating isolation centers for individuals that have tested positive, testing for all residents who are showing symptoms or that live in a unit with someone who has tested positive, as well as weekly mandatory on-site testing for all staff on the Southbury campus.
Employees said the testing started about three weeks ago, when the outbreak was at its peak. The numbers have gotten smaller into the new year, although the resident’s death last week indicates the outbreak is far from over.
The state’s vaccine advisory committee has recommended that Gov. Ned Lamont include residents in congregate settings run by the state, which would include Southbury Training School residents and staff, in the next round of vaccinations.
The CDC has recommended including the congregate settings groups in category 1C, which would likely mean they wouldn’t be vaccinated until spring. By moving them up one category, they likely will get vaccinated in February.
The residents of the training school are generally much older than other DDS clients because they have been living there since 1997, which was the last time the training school was allowed to accept new residents.
Legislators have discussed closing the training school completely because of the major costs to run it, including massive overtime costs because many of the residents are severely intellectually disabled and need 24/7 care.
Southbury was built in the 1940s to resemble a New England prep school and once housed more than 2,000 residents in 47 residential buildings or cottages. Those numbers have dropped steadily through the years, and the average cost per person has risen to more than $200,000 a year.