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With coronavirus cases climbing in nursing homes, Connecticut public health officials looking at opening more COVID-19 recovery centers

Hartford Courant - 11/24/2020

Connecticut health officials are planning to reopen a second COVID-19 recovery facility in Torrington and are looking at opening others as they battle a second surge of the coronavirus in the state’s nursing homes. The facilities are designed to help handle an influx of nursing homes residents leaving hospitals -- and also to prevent outbreaks in nursing homes.

Officials at the state Department of Public Health held a press conference Tuesday to discuss how they are combating the spread of the virus in long-term care facilities, where more than 70 percent of the state’s COVID deaths have occurred. Last week a COVID recovery facility was reopened in Meriden and it already has 40 residents as of Tuesday - more than it had the entire spring.

The facilities were initially set up to take in discharged hospital patients who were positive but couldn’t return to the long-term care facility where they lived. Now, nursing homes are also transferring residents to the facility to either try and thwart a full-scale outbreak in their facility or because they don’t have the staff to handle an outbreak.

In the past few weeks all of the residents at the Watertown Convalarium and a large group from Woodlake at Tolland have been transferred because of outbreaks in those facilities. Some of them are now at the COVID-19 facility in Meriden. The Watertown facility had eight positive cases and one death two weeks ago, while Woodlake has ad 23 cases but no deaths in the past two weeks.

“For facilities dealing with outbreaks who are unable because of physical layout or staffing issues aren’t able to follow the recommendations of Dr. Leung and her team around cohorting the CRF’s have been particularly useful,” acting-DPH Commissioner Dr. Deidre Gifford said.

There were 309 infections and 39 deaths of nursing home residents in 18 facilities across the state between Nov. 11 and Nov. 17, according to DPH data released last Thursday. There also were 262 staff infections, but no deaths.

During that same time period, the state recorded 55 deaths overall, meaning about 71% of the deaths were in nursing homes -- about the same ratio the state experienced during the peak of the virus in April and May. In just two weeks the number of deaths in nursing homes has gone from 22 to 39 and the number of infections has risen from 113 to 306.

DPH officials said that with massive testing, better cohorting and constant infection control inspections they are in far better shape to handle the surge in cases this time than they were in the spring, when testing was severely limited and information about how the virus spread was still murky.

DPH currently has a capacity of 334 beds in four COVID recovery facilities. Those in Meriden and Torrington are exclusively CRF’s and were closed nursing homes that were repurposed in the spring. They also are utilizing beds at the Riverside Rehabilitation Center in East Hartford and the Quinnipiac Valley Center in Wallingford.

DPH consultant Adelita Orefice said as of Monday, 95 beds were occupied. She said that the Torrington facility should be up and running within two weeks and DPH officials are looking for additional locations.

“We are looking to grow the number of beds in the Eastern side of the state, most likely additional units inside an already existing facilty in that area,” Orefice said.

Athena Health Care Systems, which operates the facility at the former Westfield Care & Rehabilitation Center, filled the first 30 beds there within four days and now has 42 patients. In the spring, Athena served just 31 patients total at the recovery center.

“Most of the residents we have now are from nursing homes which is a big difference from the spring when most were from a hospital,” said Timothy Brown, marketing director for Athena Health Care.

DPH officials said the “lateral transfers” from nursing home to nursing home are important to stop outbreaks, particularly to stop them from spreading in what they are terming “COVID naive” facilities - nursing homes that had no cases in the spring but have been hit in the second wave this fall.

There have been 12 nursing homes in the past month or so that have gone from no cases to largel-scale outbreaks. The facilities are spread out across the state from Groton to Waterbury to Killingly. Many have seen more than 50% infection rates among its residents, along with large scale infections of staff as well.

Of the 213 nursing homes in the state, there are only 16 that have had zero COVID cases or are naive, according to DPH data. Many of them are in eastern Connecticut, which until last month had been relatively spared by COVID. Half of them are smaller facilities with less than 50 residents.

Dr. Vivian Leung, who heads DPH’s Healthcare-Associated Infections and Antimicrobial Resistance Program, said the COVID recovery facilities are important in preserving those “naive” facilities.

“We really are trying to prevent residents who are infectious from going back to their nursing homes and infecting other people who are naive,” Leung said.

DPH officials said they are very concerned about the Thanksgiving holiday, particularly with staff protecting themselves so they don’t bring the virus back to the nursing homes and with residents leaving the facilities for family dinners.

The state is planning to once again test every long-term care resident after the Thanksgiving holiday to try and catch asymptomatic cases.

Gifford said they also are asking people not to bring nursing home residents home for Thanksgiving and expose them to the virus.

“We are concerned about individuals leaving facilities for Thanksgiving and exposing elderly nursing home residents to people that they don’t live with,” Gifford said.

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