by Carrie Moritz, Gazette
Despite attempts by nursing homes and care facilities to reduce spread, COVID cases among residents and staff have been rising after a steady decrease had been maintained. After reaching a low of 5,920 cases among U.S. nursing homes in mid-September, by October 18, that had risen to 7,563 cases.
Dr. David Grabowski, professor of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School recently stated, “The strongest predictor of whether or not we’ll see cases in [a particular setting] is community spread.”
Cases in South Dakota have been on an exponential rise since the middle of August, with October being the worst month since the pandemic had begun. While specific case numbers for Garretson cannot be verified, community spread is substantial within Minnehaha County, which saw its active case rate quintuple since the beginning of October, from 660 active cases on October 1 to 3,659 active cases on October 31.
This community spread has impacted nursing homes around the state and in Garretson. Palisades Healthcare had its first confirmed death due to COVID-19 last week. Though there have been four total deaths among Palisades Healthcare residents in the past three weeks, the Gazette has been unable to glean whether those deaths were from COVID. It has been difficult to learn the active case numbers within the local nursing home as requests by the Gazette to Palisades Healthcare for comment have gone unanswered, and the State of South Dakota has not been releasing information by ZIP code. Using data from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, ProPublica listed 4 COVID-19 cases at Palisades Health Care since May 8.
EmpRes, the parent company of Palisades Healthcare, states on its website that it has been working hard to mitigate spread within its facilities. Per the site, they screen employees at every shift, have limited outside contact from family, friends, and volunteers and have limited group activities, use testing as available, and have staff wear personal protective equipment and engage in proper health hygiene. To avoid loneliness, they state they have implemented the use of video calls and window visits.
Across the state, it has been those age 80 and above who have been most terminally impacted by COVID. As of Tuesday, 243 South Dakotans in that age group had died due to the virus. While that age group has seen the second-fewest number of cases (after age 0-9), it has the lowest rate of recovery. The number of nursing home residents within that age cohort has not been released by the SD Dept of Health, but over 50 South Dakota nursing homes have experienced at least one case of COVID, according to ProPublica. Total deaths among nursing home residents have higher than normal since the beginning of the pandemic, with some of those losses attributed to loneliness and isolation between residents as well as the virus.
The virus spreads rapidly among close-knit communities and workplaces, which places nursing homes at high risk.
“Recent data released by Johns Hopkins University and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) show that with the recent spike in new COVID cases in the general U.S. population, weekly nursing home cases are also on the rise,” stated a press release by the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living. “According to Johns Hopkins University, weekly new COVID cases in the general U.S. population rose by 61 percent to 391,527 new cases the week of October 18. A correlating uptick in new cases in nursing homes occurred when cases in the surrounding community started rising back in mid-September.”
Data released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services show that as of October 18, cases in the Midwest region accounted for 43% of all nursing home COVID cases and was on the rise.
“As we feared, the sheer volume of rising cases in communities across the U.S., combined with the asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic spread of this virus, has unfortunately led to an increase in new COVID cases in nursing homes,” stated Mark Parkinson, President and CEO of AHCA/NCAL. “It is incredibly frustrating as we had made tremendous progress to reduce COVID rates in nursing homes after the spike this summer in Sun Belt states. If everybody would wear a mask and social distance to reduce the level of COVID in the community, we know we would dramatically reduce these rates in long term care facilities.”
