Outbreak at COVID-19 San Antonio Nothing Home: 67 positive cases, 2 deaths

Nearly 70 residents of the San Antonio retirement home test positive for COVID-19. Outbreaks at the Southeast Nursing & Rehabilitation Center sent shockwaves of shock throughout local and county governments, attracting national attention.

The East South Cross Boulevard facility is home to 84 men and women. As of Friday night, 67 had tested positive and two had died on Saturday. The nursing home has about 60 staff members, 12 of whom were virus-positive. San Antonio MetroHealth said it has launched a “multi-tiered aggressive response” to protect and limit the expansion of nursing home residents.

With the addition of 59 cases from nursing homes, the total number of COVID-19 cases in Bexar County jumped to a maximum of 342 on Friday night. By Saturday night, the number had increased again to 384. The death toll was 11, including the deaths of two nursing homes.

“If anyone in San Antonio needed an awakening call to our community about the seriousness of COVID-19, that’s it,” said Mayor of San Antonio Lonni Lenberg, a city and county minister on Friday. At a press conference at the Emergency Operations Center. “COVID-19 is surprisingly contagious and very insidious.”

When the residents were tested, 11 returned to negative. Four were still pending and two were “decisive.”

Nursing homes can be particularly vulnerable to the spread of the disease, especially if proper precautions are not taken. It was not immediately apparent what caused the virus to spread in Southeast Nursing. A contact investigation was underway.

Learn from other cities

The first remarkable nursing home infection originated from a life care center in Kirkland, Washington, a city near Seattle. Health officials linked 37 deaths to their outbreak Early in the Coronavirus Crisis in the United States

San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood said the lessons learned from the outbreak of the Life Care Center have helped San Antonio authorities determine their response.

“We visited all the nursing homes in the area,” he explained. “There are 68 nursing homes within San Antonio. Our fire companies went to each and gave them information about the potential spread of COVID-19. We have confirmed that we are in the best place to enter and leave the facility, as long as no personnel or patients are outside the patient. “

On March 21, a nursing resident in the southeast was brought to the hospital for the first time. Over the next 10 days, five more patients were hospitalized and one certified nursing assistant was positive.

Part of the city’s response included a visit to all the poorly rated nursing homes in the city.

“The San Antonio Fire Department and the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District visit all 34 of the region’s lowest rated nursing homes and conduct assessments of their facilities, including infection control and environmental health procedures. Evaluation also includes a “statement.” “Finally, SAFD will again visit all 68 nursing homes in the area and inform the process of EMS transport from the facility.”

Outbreaks of coronavirus in nursing homes are not unique to San Antonio. At least 83 residents at Resort at Texas City, near Houston, tested positive. According to the Houston Public Media.

The Denton State Living Center near Dallas has affected at least 49 residents. According to KERA.

Including spread

Dr. Cherise Rohr-Allegrini is an epidemiologist and director of the San Antonio Program for the Immunization Partnership. She stated that the situation in nursing homes is often very different from the situation among the general public. In some cases, a nurse may care for more than one patient.

“ That is, a nurse or staff member who may be infected but may not have unobtrusive or very mild symptoms may see 10 or 20 patients, ” she says. Explained. Not a normal environment. “

She believed that there were practices that could be adopted to help nursing homes mitigate the epidemic.

“Ideally, we would treat a nursing home like an individual household,” she said. “That is, there is a group of patients in a few staff groups, only those patients are visible, and patients only see their staff, so they do not share the virus between different patient groups.”

On Friday, Nirenberg issued a new public health emergency order, banning nursing home staff from working in multiple facilities in the city.

“We are very concerned about the possibility that infected staff at the Southeast Nursing Center could potentially expose residents of other facilities where they might have worked,” he said.

Nirenberg acknowledged that there was no federal guidance on nursing home staff working between different facilities.

“In this situation where pandemic control is required, one obvious area that was not previously regulated was the ability of workers to transmit infection in multiple places,” he said. “That’s the part that’s now up to them to manage locally.”

Bexar County was expected to issue a similar public health order soon.

Track employees

San Antonio Metro Health contacted staff working at Southeast Nursing and instructed them to take the COVID-19 test.

On Friday, the city said they decided that employees were working in seven different facilities based on conversations with the people being tested. By Saturday night, almost all staff had been contacted. Personnel do not yet have an updated number of how many facilities may share employees.

Nirenberg said some staff had not been contacted.

“Seven people haven’t been contacted because we can’t determine their location, but we’re currently working on that process,” he said. “At present, positive people are isolated and those under investigation are also isolated.”

Rohr-Allegrini stated that, depending on the nature of the population, the virus could spread to other nursing homes.

“If such a population is already medically vulnerable, more people will see more serious illnesses. Perhaps we are fortunate and no one is going I wouldn’t have spread to the home, so it’s very important not to share the staff, but I don’t know until I have done all the tests, “she said. “That’s the ideal … test all nursing homes that may have contacted any of the staff they know is positive.”

Joey Palacios has [email protected] And on Twitter @Joeycules.