TALLAHASSEE — Florida nursing homes and assisted-living facilities have seen a 74 percent increase in coronavirus cases in the past month despite efforts by Gov. Ron DeSantis to isolate the elderly sick and avoid the kind of catastrophe that hit New York earlier in the pandemic, according a POLITICO analysis of state reporting data.
The governor’s novel move to cloister ill residents hasn’t prevented the virus from walking through the front doors of nursing homes. Infected, asymptomatic health workers themselves are carrying the virus and transmitting to their own patients, Mary Mayhew, secretary of the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, said in an interview Wednesday.
Now, as a result, cases at nursing homes are soaring. The Florida Department of Health on Tuesday reported that an average of 2,606 residents a day tested positive for the coronavirus last week, a 74 percent increase from the 1,496 residents a month ago, during the week of June 14.
About one in five Florida residents is 65 or older, and the state is home to 691 licensed nursing homes with 84,448 beds.
And the number of infected workers at nursing homes and assisted-living facilities has more than doubled over the past month. On June 14, 2,326 facility employees tested positive for Covid-19. As of Monday, there were 5,766 cases.
“We’ve done a lot to guard that door, to keep that virus from getting into our facilities,” Mayhew said in an interview Wednesday. “Our staff are human beings who have lives outside of those facilities.”
Mayhew said the state on June 17 began requiring long-term care facility employees to undergo testing every two weeks.
The spike in cases among members of Florida’s most vulnerable population could mark a key turning point in the pandemic. The uptick threatens to rapidly increase deaths as the virus roars back across much of the country, not long after states like New York and New Jersey emerged from several grim months this spring. Outbreaks in nursing homes drove a large share of the tens of thousands of deaths in the New York region — and led DeSantis to publicly criticize New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s policies.
The rise in nursing home infections seems to have caught the Florida governor by surprise. DeSantis as recently as this week downplayed the increase in elderly patients, saying the 3,072 new cases from Monday represented only about 2 percent of the 142,000 people living in long-term care.
By Wednesday, he has begun to change his tone, projecting confidence but saying a new strategy was needed. DeSantis now says the new two-week testing mandate will help control the spread.
“You’re going to be able to identify more and more of those before it spreads widely inside the long-term care center, and that really is the name of the game,” DeSantis said during a Wednesday news conference at the state Capitol.
Nursing home staffers are screened before they enter a facility, said Florida Health Care Association spokeswoman Kristen Knapp. The state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency send staffers to fill in for care workers who test positive for the virus.
Dispute the precautions, nursing home employees can carry the virus and pass screenings. The Florida Department of Health recently identified 50 employees who tested positive during an outbreak at a North Florida long-term care facility.
DeSantis in May began opening care homes specifically for Covid-infected patients in an attempt to slow the spread of the virus among the high-risk elderly population. The state currently operates 15 of the skilled-nursing facilities and has plans to open more as the number of infected residents mounts.
But officials at the Washington-based American Health Care Association and the National Center for Assisted Living, a trade group that represents more than 14,000 long-term care centers nationwide, said they expect the number of sick nursing home residents to increase nationwide.
Association President and CEO Mark Parkinson and National Council for Assisted Living Executive Director Scott Tittle on Tuesday warned the National Governors Association that stockpiles of critical medical supplies in several states are dwindling.
Parkinson and Tittle pointed to a study conducted by the Harvard Medical School, the Brown University School of Public Health, and the University of Chicago that showed that community spread will continue to infiltrate nursing homes across the country.
“Nursing homes and assisted living communities cannot stop the virus by ourselves,” they wrote.
Florida Division of Emergency Management warehouses have plenty of virus-related supplies on hand, Director Jared Moskowitz said in an interview. The state’s stockpile includes enough gowns, masks and face shields to endure a hurricane and the continued pandemic.
“And the stuff we are using is quickly replenished,” Moskowitz said.
The state has reported 301,810 total Covid-19 cases and 4,626 deaths.
Source: politico.com
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