30% of teens at Prescott Valley treatment center have COVID-19
Cluster of cases worrisome in Yavapai County
Edwardine Janay can only offer so much help to her 16-year-old daughter as she battles COVID-19.
She tells Elaina, her daughter, to keep eating even when she can’t taste the food. To stay hydrated. To rest.
But she can’t see her daughter. Elaina lives at Mingus Mountain Academy near Prescott Valley, while Janay lives more than two hours away, on the Gila River Indian Reservation.
“I just sit and cry because I don’t know what’s going to happen or if it’s going to get worse — if she’s going to get worse,” she said.
Elaina, and more than 140 other residents, live at Mingus Mountain, a residential treatment center for teenage girls with behavioral issues. The academy is now experiencing a cluster of COVID-19 cases: 42 teens, or about 30%, have tested positive, along with 12 staff members, according to Darby Dame, a spokeswoman for the center.
Dame wrote in an email that any student or staff member who was tested positive was “receiving the best care possible.”
Family members like Janay are worried about the teens. They don’t know if staff members are equipped with the right protective gear and they don’t know when they’ll see the girls next.
One mother, Suzanne Hilborn, said her daughter Elinore told her that infected residents were walking around campus and residents were not provided with masks.
“There’s so many cases of it up there, and it’s running rampant through the campus and they’re not protecting the girls,” she said.
What we know about Mingus cases
Dame wrote that no resident is showing “severe symptoms” of the illness, although Janay said her daughter has a high fever, sore throat, dry cough and body aches.
Yavapai County, where Mingus Mountain Academy is located, has reported 152 cases, which means those at center make up more than one-third of the county’s positive cases.
Dame wrote that staff members are deep-cleaning and sanitizing the facility; following CDC guidance; and taking employee temperatures at the beginning of each shift.
She also wrote that the academy suspended new admissions on April 24.
Some family members are concerned staff members are not wearing proper protective equipment.
Hilborn said the girls aren’t required to wear masks, according to her daughter.
Dame wrote that while there’s a shortage of personal protective equipment, Mingus has PPE and has been “reserving and/or utilizing it in accordance with CDC guidelines.” Yavapai Community Health Services also wrote on its Facebook page that a large order of PPE for the school was picked up on May 5.
The Arizona Republic asked whether staff and students are being supplied with masks.
“Staff and students are highly encouraged to utilize their own cloth face coverings to help slow the spread of coronavirus,” Dame wrote.
Hilborn also told The Republic that her daughter, who has not been tested yet, told her it was hard to avoid the teens who had tested positive, because they weren’t being isolated and were walking around the campus.
One girl, Hilborn’s daughter told her,
ran over to another and coughed in her face, yelling “COVID” as she ran away laughing.
“Every single one of those kids probably has it,” Hilborn said.
In response to Hilborn’s claim that infected teens are not isolated, Dame wrote that the center is taking “appropriate measures to mitigate the risks” of the coronavirus.
“We do allow our students to spend time outside and speak with their therapists ... while following proper social distancing protocols,” she wrote.
Mingus Mountain Academy is licensed by the Arizona Department of
Health Services as a residential facility. The center provides treatment tailored to teen girls for mental health issues and addiction.
In June 2019, health officials cited the center because an inspector found six of 11 staff members in the organization did not have current documents proving they had completed first aid training. The academy later corrected the problem and was not cited in an inspection this year.
The center is not just grappling with the new coronavirus. A search also is underway for a missing teen.
A 14-year-old girl, Jolette Llanes, also went missing from Mingus Mountain Academy on April 30, according to Dwight D’Evelyn, a spokesman with the Yavapai County Sheriff ’s Office.
Hilborn and Janay have mixed feelings about pulling their daughters out of the center. Hilborn has other kids at home, who she worries could fall ill. Janay wants Elaina to stay because Janay doesn’t want her mother, who has health problems, to be exposed.
Charlotte Chuchman wants her granddaughter Lauren home. But the 17year-old’s stay at Mingus Mountain is court-mandated and the family has not successfully appealed the mandate.
“It’s not any place where a girl should be,” she said.
Mingus Mountain is helping her daughter behaviorally, Hilborn said. Elinore, her daughter, was admitted a couple of months ago, right as fears about the spread of the new coronavirus started to mount.
Hilborn and her husband thought it was fortunate that Elinore would be in the mountains, isolated from crowded places. But that wasn’t the case.
She said she learned the new coronavirus was spreading around the facility two weeks ago, when officials sent an email explaining that some students had tested positive.
“It’s really scary,” she said. “I don’t know if my daughter has it .... We’re waiting to find out whether or not our daughter is infected right now and it’s terrifying. And we can’t go up and see her, we can’t keep her safe.”