Families watch helplessly as coronavirus hits nursing homes
Olivia Labrador’s mind started racing last week after she received a call from her 89-year-old father’s nursing home, Garden Crest Rehabilitation Center in Silver Lake, informing her that a patient at the facility had tested positive for the coronavirus.
“Oh my God,” Labrador thought, picturing patients she’d seen on breathing machines in the past. “What’s going to happen to all of them?”
Labrador’s family considered their options. They could bring her father home, but they worried he might already have been exposed to the virus that causes COVID-19, which would put other vulnerable relatives at risk.
As some experts advise pulling loved ones out of nursing homes to save them from the pandemic, Labrador and her family faced an awful dilemma, one that would have seemed unimaginable a month ago. But they are far from alone.
Across the country, outbreaks are occurring in nursing homes at terrifying speed _ leading administrators to ban visitors, confine patients to their rooms and scramble to create sterile wings to treat residents who come down with the disease. The stakes are literally life and death, since residents, who are elderly and almost always have underlying health problems, are among the most vulnerable to the lethal new pathogen.
Hundreds of long-term care facilities in the U.S. now have residents who are infected with the virus. On Tuesday, health officials in Washington state alone reported 108 outbreaks at long-term care facilities. And at a single nursing home in Tennessee, more than 100 residents have tested positive.
In Connecticut, state officials are re-opening previously closed facilities to create separate nursing homes only for residents who are positive for COVID-19 – like modern-day leper colonies. The “extreme precaution” is warranted, according to Connecticut officials, because the results can be catastrophic when the virus gets loose among such a vulnerable population.
One of the first coronavirus hot spots in the U.S. was at the Life Care Center nursing home in Kirkland, Wash., where twothirds of the residents and 47 workers fell ill, and 37 people died.
The worrisome national trend is picking up steam in Southern California, too.
On Monday, Los Angeles County health officials announced that Garden Crest was among 11 area nursing homes with outbreaks, meaning three or more cases involving residents or staff had been confirmed at the facility.
That was nearly quadruple the number of nursing-home outbreaks county officials had announced on March 27.
The county’s Department of Public Health is also investigating reports of at least one suspected coronavirus infection at nine additional nursing homes. Of the county’s 54 deaths from coronavirus, at least six have been nursing-home residents.
Debbie Alexander’s 74-year-old mother is at the Kensington in Redondo Beach, another of the L.A. County facilities battling an outbreak.
When Alexander heard about the first case from administrators, she considered pulling her mom out, but there was nowhere available to move her that would necessarily be safer.
Alexander, who is still going to work at a research laboratory at a San Diego hospital, worries she might infect her mother if they were living together.
While she’s nervous, Alexander said, she’s satisfied with the measures administrators at the
Kensington are taking to try to control the outbreak. They are not allowing visitors to enter, and residents are mostly confined to their rooms. Residents’ temperatures are taken twice per day. And administrators are sending a daily email update.
“Obviously, I’m worried about Mom. She’s very high-risk. But I think they are doing everything they can,” Alexander said.
Len Maisch, 84, said he moved into the Kensington about five weeks ago to care for his wife Joann, 71, who was diagnosed with a fatal and degenerative brain disease. They sold their Hermosa Beach home, a beloved place with citrus trees, when Joann could no longer use the stairs.
“When you have someone you truly love, you try not to leave them in a facility alone,” Maisch said. “She’s a beautiful flower, and she’s wilting, and so all you can do is give her love. ... I can’t love her enough. I can’t kiss her enough.”
Now, with the coronavirus loose, the facility is essentially on lockdown, Maisch said. But he and his dog, Sophie, are still allowed to go outside to the courtyard. Every morning at 6, he takes the black-and-white spaniel for a walk, then comes in to read newspapers: The Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe, among others.
Maisch said some of the facility’s staff has left since the outbreak, which he understands. He has been told one person tested positive, and five others were removed over concerns related to the outbreak. But in general, he said, he feels safe.
“I understand what’s going on, and I understand they are doing everything they can,” he said. “I feel comfortable that they’ve done a good job.”