Increase reported in nursing home infections
More than 60 active resident and staff COVID-19 cases are in long-term care facilities in Garland County, according to the Arkansas Department of Health’s most recent report on nursing homes with new or additional cases in the last 14 days.
Thursday’s report listed 20 active resident and seven active staff cases at Lake Hamilton Health and Rehab, 120 Pittman
Road. Twenty new resident cases were reported, with the last positive test Oct. 13. Thirty-one new staff cases were reported, with Oct. 13 being the date of the most recent positive test.
Dr. Gene Shelby, Garland County’s health officer, said the county’s number of actively infected health care workers increased by more than two-thirds last week.
“Over the last two weeks we’ve really seen a spike,” he said. “There were 27 this past week. The week before only 16. Most of these health care workers listed are in their 20s. I’m pretty sure they’re nursing home staff. I think with the younger workers, a significant number are asymptomatic.”
Thursday’s report listed 14 active resident and nine active staff cases at The Pines Nursing and Rehab Center, 524 Carpenter Dam Road. Fourteen new positive resident cases and 15 new positive staff cases were reported, with Oct. 13 the date of the most recent positive test.
Lake Hamilton Health and Rehab and The Pines didn’t respond to requests for comment by presstime.
Fourteen new staff cases were reported at Quapaw Care and Rehabilitation Center, 138 Brighton Terrace, with Oct. 8 the date of the most recent positive test. Three of the cases were listed as active.
Somerset Senior Living at Canyon Springs, 1401 Park Ave., had seven active resident cases and four active staff cases.
The revised directive the Health Department issued Oct. 6 defined a new staff case as one where a staff member has had contact with a resident or been in the facility within 14 days of the collection of their test. Newly positive residents are those whose infections were diagnosed after admission to the facility. The category doesn’t include new or existing residents who are admit
ted or return to the facility with a known positive case.
Visitation is limited at facilities that have had a positive case in the previous 14 days, a shorter time period than the previous standard of 28 days. The state said the shorter time-frame that took effect earlier this month proceeded from a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services directive.
Regular surveillance testing of long-term care facility residents and staff began last summer and has increased into the fall. Shelby said those test reports account for a large percentage of the county’s more than 40,000 polymerase chain reaction and antigen test reports listed on the Health Department’s website.
“I think that accounts for a big part of our increased number of tests,” he said.
Nursing home resident and staff tests as a percent of the county’s total number of tests is unclear. The Health Department said Tuesday that it’s unable to provide a percentage. It said questions about the county’s weekly allocation of test kits for nursing homes should be directed to the Arkansas Health Care Association. AHCA, the advocacy and lobbing organization for the state’s nursing home industry, didn’t respond to a request for comment by presstime.