Beaver nursing home hit hard by virus
A Beaver County nursing home is battling a major outbreak of COVID-19, with 14 residents confirmed positive for the virus and additional tests pending, the nursing home’s medical director said Saturday.
“We’re taking appropriate measures to care for everyone affected,” said Dr. Dave Thimons, the medical director of Brighton Rehabilitation and Wellness Center. “Everyone’s working hard and we’re doing what we can.”
On Friday, the 500-bed former county-owned nursing home in Beaver began testing all of its residents who have any symptoms of COVID-19 — typically a dry cough, fever and breathing problems — after the first case came back positive, he said.
“A couple of patients’ ” conditions were bad enough that they were transferred to Heritage Valley Beaver hospital, Dr. Thimons said, but most are still being cared for at the nursing home.
Thirteen of the 14 residents who tested positive so far are still at the nursing home. The other resident is now being treated at the hospital.
Earlier Saturday, Dr. Thimons said there were first two positive tests, then a third. Late Saturday afternoon, another 11 positive tests came in from the labs. He said the nursing home immediately called the state Department of Health and Heritage Valley to let them know the caseload has grown and that more patients could eventually be headed to the hospital.
“We’re trying to do all the right things,” he said.
Dr. Thimons said Heritage Valley has run some of the tests in its lab, but many others were sent to MHS Lab, a private lab in
Monroeville that announced Friday that it has a rapid COVID-19 test it just got up and running that can run 1,000 tests a day. MHS is focusing its testing on nursing homes.
The cases at Brighton were part of a near-doubling of cases in Beaver County from 14 total cases Friday to 22 total cases Saturday.
Beaver County Commissioner Tony Amadio said the county officially asked Gov. Tom Wolf on Saturday morning to issue a stay-athome order for the county, which the state announced a few hours later.
“The numbers [of cases] have doubled, and we just want to get ahead of it,” Mr. Amadio said. “We’re always overly cautious. We want to protect our community.”
The state health department has been keeping Beaver County officials informed with updates on the virus, Mr. Amadio said. Commissioners, emergency management and court officials meet every morning as well.
But Mr. Amadio said he knew nothing about the outbreak at the nursing home, formerly known as Friendship Ridge nursing home when the county owned it. The county sold it in 2014 for $37.5 million to an array of investors under the corporate name Comprehensive Healthcare Management Services.
Brighton Rehabilitation and Wellness was one of 20 nursing homes across the state, and 400 across the country, included in a report released last June by Pennsylvania Sens. Bob Casey and Pat Toomey of nursing homes that “consistently underperform.”
“The deadly spread of COVID-19 in nursing homes across the country is everyone’s worst fear,” Mr. Casey, a Democrat, said in an email reply to questions Saturday. “Because nursing home residents and the workers who care for them live and interact in close quarters, all nursing homes are vulnerable to an outbreak — even those with the highest quality.”
Mr. Toomey, a Republican, said in an email: “The apparent COVID-19 outbreak at Brighton Rehabilitation and Wellness Center in Beaver County is heartbreaking. However, it is important that we not jump to conclusions regarding the circumstances that caused this outbreak. In the coming days, my office will requesting additional information regarding this outbreak from Brighton officials and others.”
Beaver County, like all but six counties in the state, does not have a county health department. That means the state Department of Health provides coverage for the county.
But state health department spokeswoman Maggi Mumma wrote in an email response to questions that the state would not talk about specific cases or locations “to ensure that we respect the right to privacy for Pennsylvanians.”
The state, like the rest of the country, though, has known since the outbreak began in China in January that COVID-19 strikes the elderly much worse than it does younger people, with most deaths occurring in those 65 and older.
The fear that the disease would devastate nursing homes has been heightened since early in the pandemic, when one of the first large outbreaks in the U.S. occurred in a nursing home in Kirkland, Wash., where 35 people have died.
In addition, 29 cases have been reported so far at a nursing home in Morgantown, W.Va.
“As far as what is being done in nursing homes,” Ms. Mumma wrote in her email, “we know that congregate care settings, including nursing homes, are those in which a case or two could lead to a large number of cases. That is why congregate care settings are among those that are considered a priority for testing both at our state public health lab, and at many of the drivethrough testing locations across the state. Once we determine there is a positive test at a congregate facility, such as a nursing home, we are working to determine other individuals who may need to be tested.”
As of early Saturday, the state had found 52 cases in a total of 33 nursing homes out of 695 such facilities across the state. That number will jump as soon as all the cases from Brighton Rehabilitation and Wellness are counted.
Dr. Thimons said Brighton has done everything it could to prepare for the pandemic and responded well this week when the cases hit there.
“It’s been the best collaborative team I’ve ever worked with,” he said of the staff, state health department, county emergency management and hospital officials who have helped so far.
Dr. Thimons said Friday that the nursing home scrambled to create a “COVID unit” in its fourth floor’s east wing, where the two positive patients resided.
Other residents with symptoms who did not live in the unit, known as 4E, also have been tested, he said, but so far none of them have tested positive.
The nursing home “has done everything appropriate” during the pandemic, Dr. Thimons said.
That included following Mr. Wolf’s order two weeks ago to limit visitors into nursing homes.
Since then, the nursing home also has been regularly taking the temperatures of all employees when they are working, to see if they have any fever that might be an indication they are infected with COVID-19.
A handwritten sign in red marker that is taped to the main entrance of the building reads: “ALL employees must sign in and their temperatures taken before starting their shift.”
An employee who asked not to be named said residents are well aware of the pandemic and regularly ask questions about what would happen to them if someone in the building became infected.
“They’re scared,” the employee said. “We’re trying to keep them as calm as possible.”