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Delayed testing at a Louisiana nursing home may have increased the fatal damage to the coronavirus.Coronavirus

 


Charles Brown never forgets June 2, when his mother, Hazell Dean, was diagnosed with the coronavirus.

By then, it’s been two months since he was able to hug and kiss her. Monroe’s nursing home, the St. Joseph Continuous Care Center, where she spent the past three years, has been closed since COVID-19 arrived in the state in March, like all Louisiana nursing homes.

Dean, 93, died in the hospital on June 16, two weeks after his diagnosis. According to Brown, his mom caught it from her new roommate. This was part of a wave of coronavirus infections that struck St. Joseph in late May. By the end of June, COVID had killed 10 inhabitants, one in seven.

Severe casualties in St. Joseph (currently up to 18) are not uncommon. The coronavirus broke nursing homes in Louisiana and across the country, like a drought-stricken forest fire. Deaths of at least 30 residents have been recorded in seven homes in the state.

However, the peak of infection and death in St. Joseph occurred at a critical time when the virus was still moving through the state, and Louisiana health officials were to more aggressively test residents and staff. I was struggling to get a nursing home.



Charles Brown and Hazell Dean 1

Pastor Charles Brown of Monroe and his mother Hazel Dean in 2016. Dean died in a hospital in the Parish of Wasita after being infected with the coronavirus in June 2020.




In some places, the effort went slowly. When Dean was infected, only half of St. Joseph’s inhabitants and only 11% of their staff were tested, and newly released records show that the house was a hotbed of COVID-19 at the time.

Dean’s diagnosis was made two days after the May 31 deadline set by Governor John Bel Edwards to test all residents and staff at a nursing home in Louisiana. It was the deadline that didn’t get close to the gathering of dozens of houses. St. Joseph was far from the worst criminal, but lagging behind.

“Until the coronavirus, I was very happy with them,” Brown said of his mother’s caretaker. “But when the virus hit, I lost trust in them. I think it was their fault that my mom was gone. My mom was ready, but I’m ready It wasn’t done. “

Brown said St. Joseph changed hands within two months of his mother’s death. The new owner, Cantex Continuing Care Network, is a for-profit company, but St. Joseph was previously run by the religious non-profit organization Christus Health.

In response to the question, the home operator prepared, “We are working hard to keep patients safe during the pandemic,” and “consistently follow all testing guidance from the Louisiana Department of Health.” Made a statement.

The statement also stated that St. Joseph is currently testing staff twice a week and residents weekly, under federal guidance.

When nursing homes reached the early zeros of the virus, Louisiana health officials said universal testing and rigorous precautions were the most important tools to delay its spread.

In early May, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention demanded universal and regular testing in nursing homes, and the US government sent 200,000 test kits to the state, a number of which soon reached 30 a month. It has increased to 10,000. Louisiana health officials have warned that state “strike teams” will visit nursing homes that cannot keep up.

However, half of the state’s 278 nursing homes were in time for Edwards’ deadline, many far behind St. Joseph. In fact, nearly one-fifth of Louisiana’s nursing homes hadn’t tested one resident or staff by the Edwards deadline.

State Health Officer Jimmy Guidley Finally tired In mid-June, we sent a letter to nursing home managers warning them of possible sanctions and fines if they did not comply immediately. It wasn’t until early July that all residents of the state were tested. It took more time to complete the tests for all staff. Although the risk of death is usually lower than that of residents, it is often the responsibility of introducing the virus into nursing homes and spreading it more widely if present.

By that time, however, the virus had hit approximately 1,400 nursing home residents in Louisiana, accounting for more than 40% of the state’s total at the time.

No house was fined or sanctioned to test the rug, according to State Department spokesman Kevin Ritten.

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It is difficult to know how big a test failure played in early deaths. A Report published this week The New York Attorney General concluded that far more New Yorkers died after being infected with the coronavirus in nursing homes than official tabulations suggest. One of the main findings: During the early months of the pandemic, residents were “higher at risk of harm” due to inadequate testing of residents and staff.

Brian Lee of Family for Better Care, a national advocacy group, said the importance of early universal testing cannot be exaggerated.

“The only way to slow down the virus was a powerful test,” he said. “These nursing homes that did not test good work put a welcome sign at the front door saying” Enter, COVID-19 “. “

Ten months after the pandemic, at least 2,700 residents of a nursing home in Louisiana died of COVID. This is almost one-third of the deaths from the state’s coronavirus. It’s a very large percentage of the total, but it’s slimmer than the early days of the virus, which ran through the Elderly Housing with Care with little COVID-19 checked.

New records released by the Louisiana Department of Health in response to requests from The Times-Picayune and The Advocate show that testing at nursing homes can vary significantly in speed for unknown reasons.

The virus settled in different parts of Louisiana at different times, but geography does not appear to play an important role in how quickly the tests were completed. For example, some nursing homes in the Orleans and Jefferson parishes were one of the last to test residents in Louisiana, even though the virus was initially concentrated in metropolitan areas.

Visit Maison Orleans, a large nursing home in uptown New Orleans. It was one of the last homes in Louisiana to test all about 140 residents. As of June 17, state records indicate that Maison Orleans had not yet tested one resident or staff member.

One month after the governor’s goal, Maison Orleans did not complete the test until the end of June. Given the early growth in New Orleans, questions were raised about how much damage the virus had done so far. Records show that Maison Orleans underreports the impact of COVID on residents.

The house only reported the deaths of three coronavirus residents to Louisiana health officials as of this week, but at least the records provided by the office of Orleans parish coroner Dwight McKenna occurred there. It shows the death of 8 coronaviruses. The last of these deaths occurred on May 11-more than five weeks before the Maison Orleans tested one resident for the virus.

Other homes in the metropolitan area, which reported far more deaths, were similarly slow to launch tests.

One was Algiers’ River Palms. This was an early hotspot, and to date, 20 resident deaths have been reported from the coronavirus. According to coroner records, more than half of them occurred before June 17, when River Palms tested only 20% of about 164 residents and had no staff.

At Poydras Home in uptown New Orleans, the rooms where residents gathered for exercise and movies have been vacant for nine months. on Wednesday…

With the exception of River Palms and Maison Orleans, at least two homes in the New Orleans region, the West Jefferson Healthcare Center in Harvey and the Colonial Oaks Living Center in Metally, also failed resident and staff testing by mid-June.

A person who answered the phone at River Palms said he was a new employee and could not comment on what happened before he arrived. Subsequent efforts to talk to the manager have failed. West Jefferson, Colonial Oaks, and Maison Orleans officials did not respond to requests for comment.

In other regions, state officials have identified a number of homes that were significantly below test targets by June 17. Region 2 had at least 6 units, including the Baton Rouge and its surrounding parishes, 13 units in northwestern Louisiana, and 3 units in central Louisiana. ..

Whatever the factors, the speed at which nursing homes were able to test their allegations may have played an important role in the early spread of the virus. As nursing homes compete to vaccinate residents and staff, there may be new urgency as an effort to the same extent as promoting testing in early 2020.

Edwards This week he said he was “worried” About the pace of new initiatives underway in partnership with mega pharmacy Walgreens and CVS. According to data provided by LDH spokesman Litten, about 68% of nursing home residents were receiving the first dose of a double-dose regimen as of Friday, while about 24% of staff took it. Was there.

Meanwhile, one in ten nursing homes has not yet been visited by the vaccination team-authorities this week said the team will arrive at all homes by February 8.

At least eight residents of the Maison Orleans Nursing Home in Uptown New Orleans have died of the coronavirus — according to records …

The low vaccination rate of staff is related to resistance to injections rather than lack of availability. Mark Berger, a board member of the politically strong Louisiana Nursing Home Association, released a statement this week saying that nursing home staff are “working hard to educate residents and staff” about the need for vaccination. LDH has also begun distributing fact sheets that uncover rumors and myths about vaccination. We hope that this will increase the participation of staff.

Born in the Parish of East Feliciana and raised in the Baton Rouge, Brown is still struggling to accept his mother’s death before moving to Monroe to start the church. He admits she wasn’t in good health-she was bedridden for years-but she was clear and well before the virus, he said.

The two were very close. Brown is Dean’s only child and celebrated his birthday on January 4th. Brown’s father was killed at an early age. Her second husband also died after Dean remarried. After that, there were only two people.

“I was a scary kid to raise,” Brown said. “If everyone else gave up, she wouldn’t give up. She should have given up on me. I owe everything to her.”

Dean moved to St. Joseph in early 2017, and Brown or his wife visited daily until she was locked out of the facility in March 2020 due to the virus.

Although the restrictions on visits were strict, Brown was outraged by the fact that staff and vendors were coming and going as they pleased, and no one knew if any of them were ill.

“Everything was mismanaged,” he said. “That’s clear. We need to set up a protocol to ensure that employees and vendors have the right PPE and aren’t in contact with the virus. They didn’t do that.”

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