Nursing home testing nearly complete, Stitt says
More than 1,100 residents and employees at nursing homes and long-term care facilities tested positive for COVID-19 in May after state health officials tested most residents and staff at facilities across the state.
Gov. Kevin Stitt's office announced Tuesday 714 residents and 428 staff members tested positive for the virus after the state Health Department, in conjunction with the Governor's Solution Task Force, tested roughly 35,800 people at 265 facilities last month.
All told, about 3% of those tested were positive for COVID-19.
Stitt said his goal to test all residents and staff in nursing homes and longterm care facilities — about 42,000 people — should be complete by Friday. So far, the state has tested all facilities with confirmed cases of COVID- 19 and those with people that are showing symptoms of the virus, according to a news release from the governor's office.
“Thanks to hardworking public employees and health care professionals across the state, we were able to quadruple our overall COVID- 19 testing in May,” Stitt said in a statement. “They quickly and successfully adapted to this remarkable increase in workload, and we are in the midst of improving our infrastructure and expanding staffing to ensure we can maintain this momentum.”
So far ,91 Oklahoma nursing homes and longterm care facilities have reported cases of COVID19. The state Health Department announced Monday that it would no longer report details about COVID-19 cases by nursing homes and long-term care facilities because emergency powers granted to the governor had expired.
Some facility residents and staff were tested multiple times, Stitt and interim Health Commissioner Lance Frye wrote in a letter to Senate Minority Leader Kay Floyd, D-Oklahoma City, who had asked for an update on the nursing home testing.
On behalf of Senate Democrats, Floyd said she hopes the testing continues as COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes and long-term care facilities represent roughly half of the state's total COVID-19 deaths and as state health officials consider allowing some visitations to resume at the facilities that have been locked down for months.
“We also request a plan for repeated and ongoing testing in nursing homes and longterm care facilities ,” Floyd wrote in a letter. The Governor' s Solution Task Force is working on such a plan, according to the news release.
Two nursing homes were reported for not following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for infection prevention and control.
Hillcrest Nursing Center in Moore was cited on May 9 f or not quarantining patients with COVID-19, residents who were new admissions or those who had just been transferred from a hospital or received other medical treatments at an outside facility. The nursing home al so was chastised for not screening those entering the facility for symptoms of the virus.
As of press time, a spokeswoman for the state Health Department could not confirm the second facility that was reported. Both facilities are required to submit to the state a corrective plan of action.