Coronavirus may have been at nursing home since Feb. 10
KIRKLAND, Wash. — From her room inside the nursing home, Judy Shape has heard the coughs of other residents with the novel coronavirus illness down the hall and watched the ambulances come and go for weeks.
Shape, 81, had moved into Kirkland’s Life Care Center on Feb. 26 for shortterm care following time in the hospital for blood-clot surgery. It was terrible timing: that same day, Life Care said it notified state officials of an outbreak of severe respiratory illness, which staff had noticed was spreading for weeks.
But the outbreak, which turned out to be COVID-19, may have been circulating in the facility much longer. A Life Care official said staff noticed a respiratory outbreak by Feb. 10, and interviews and a review of 911 call logs obtained by The Seattle Times show it could have appeared even sooner.
Exacerbating the problem: Confusion inside the nursing home and among state health officials over who was responsible for testing sick patients allowed the disease to continue spreading, turning Life Care into the nation’s largest source of
COVID-19 fatalities.
Last month, there were 120 residents at Life Care. As of Wednesday, at least 81 have tested positive for the coronavirus and of those, 34 have died, as well as a visitor. About a fourth of the coronavirus fatalities in the U.S. have been linked to the nursing home, according to state and federal data.
Interviews with residents’ family members and a review of 911 call logs obtained by The Seattle Times show a tragedy slowly unfolding. And as nursing homes nationwide prepare to protect residents from a virus that is especially dangerous for the elderly, the situation in Kirkland demonstrates a worst-case scenario and a cautionary tale for other facilities.
Even as state and federal officials were responding to COVID-19 cases at Life Care, the nursing home didn’t obtain enough supplies to test all residents until March 7, and it took another week to test most employees. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a report Wednesday that limited access to testing, as well as staff working at multiple facilities while sick and a lack of protective equipment, contributed to the disease’s spread at Life Care.