Some nursing homes have no virus cases
As the coronavirus continues to ravage the frail and elderly at disproportionate rates, the 50 nursing homes left in Connecticut without a confirmed case of COVID-19 may be the only bright spot for long-term care.
It’s not yet clear, however, whether the nursing homes and assisted living facilities that have remained free of the new coronavirus for the last 10 weeks are models to follow or pockets of extraordinary luck.
The reason? COVID-19 could be present in facilities presumed to be virus-free — in residents or staff who aren’t showing symptoms of fever or shortness of breath.
The only way to be certain is to test every resident and staff member, which the state began doing this month at all its 215 nursing homes.
“As we do more testing we find more infections,” said Av Harris, spokesman for the state Department of Public Health. “It’s just the nature of this virus.”
Another reason it’s hard to know why the highly contagious respiratory virus hasn’t spread to certain nursing homes and assisted living locations is that visitation lockdowns, infection controls, and staffing ratios may be no different than the places beleaguered by COVID-19 deaths and infections.
“We’re seeing these horrific stories coming out of nursing homes and it’s very disconcerting,” said Maria Scaros, executive director of The Greens at Greenwich, an assisted living facility that had no confirmed COVID-19 cases as of last week. “You can do everything right and this insidious disease still comes in the door.”
The executive director of a COVID-free nursing home in New Haven agrees.
“We’re in the same situation as everyone who’s working so hard to prevent the spread of the virus,” said Jay Katz, executive director of Leeway Inc., a 30-bed nursing home for people with HIV and AIDS. “We’ve followed these universal practice protocols that were supposed to be implemented in every facility, but a lot of other nursing homes did too, and they have cases now.”
Cautionary tale
As leaders in Hartford begin the deliberate process of reopening the state this week, health officials are counting on tests to give them a better picture about how certain nursing homes have survived a crisis that has defied Connecticut’s best effort to protect its most vulnerable population.
The latest health department numbers released last week showed that nursing home residents represented only 20 percent of Connecticut’s confirmed COVID-19 cases but accounted for 60 percent of the state’s coronavirus-associated deaths.
Although it was good news that the 163 nursing homes with at least one confirmed coronavirus case was an increase of only three nursing homes over the previous week, the number of residents with confirmed COVID-19 cases in those homes increased by 16 percent.
As a result, some Connecticut nursing homes have COVID-19 deaths as acute as the cautionary tale from Washington state that leaders here promised not to repeat — the Seattle-area nursing home that had 40 coronavirus deaths.
Connecticut now has multiple cautionary tales of its own.
Kimberly Hall North in Windsor had 43 confirmed or probable COVID-19 deaths as of the state’s last report on May 13. Waterbury’s Abbott Hall had 41 coronavirus-associated deaths and four nursing homes in Shelton had a combined 107 coronavirusassociated deaths, according to the state health department.
Gov. Ned Lamont last week removed the state’s top health official, in part over criticism of her response to the nursing home crisis.
Virus-free homes
The state health department’s effort to find stealth cases of coronavirus that may be hiding in nursing homes presumed to be COVID-19 free is designed to save lives by quarantining those carrying the virus before they show infection signs.
The goal is not to be surprised a second time should the virus return with another surge.
“At nursing homes without confirmed cases, we are encouraging point prevalence survey testing to look for any asymptomatic COVID-positive residents that could put the nursing home at risk for an outbreak,” Harris said. “We are also advising nursing homes on best practices in infection control to prepare them for the possibility of a resident with COVID-19 in their building.”
It’s no surprise that most of the nursing homes without COVID-19 cases are in the four eastern counties of the state, with less density than Hartford or New Haven counties.
In Fairfield County, which has been Connecticut’s coronavirus hot spot since the first case was confirmed in Danbury on March 8, every nursing home has at least one confirmed COVID-19 case.
In Southbury, which has three nursing homes with no COVID-19 cases, the parent company of one long-term care facility said it kept the infection out of its building when four employees suspected of being sick were immediately quarantined.
“(They) were immediately isolated from the community, minimizing the risk of exposure to residents and other associates,” said Vicki Doyle, a spokesperson for The Watermark at East Hill, which started taking COVID-19 precautions in February.
“Two of the associates have already returned to work after resolution of all symptoms and required self-isolation,” Doyle said. “Before becoming symptomatic the other two associates chose not to work in the community because we have asked associates not to work in other locations.”
Arizona-based Watermark operates a second nursing home in Bridgeport called The Watermark at 3030 Park, which had nine confirmed COVID-19 cases and four COVID-19 deaths as of last week.