Chapin nursing home reports higher numbers of COVID-19 cases than DHEC announced
A Chapin nursing home official told The State newspaper on Thursday that its figures for staff and patients infected by COVID was 30 — far higher than the figure of three that the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control announced earlier this week.
“I can’t comment on what the number that DHEC reported. Because what we have reported to DHEC as of Friday was 24 residents and two staff, and then on Tuesday, we reported four more residents,” said Denise Dickinsen, Vice President of Planned Growth & Development for Lutheran Homes of South Carolina, which owns Heritage at Lowman.
Later Thursday, asked about the discrepancy in numbers at the Lowman home and DHEC’s Tuesday figures, DHEC chief of staff Jennifer Read said the difference came from a delay in her agency’s being able to confirm all numbers at the Lowman home as positive COVID-19 cases.
“What we sent out Tuesday night were the three cases ... that our investigators were able to confirm,” Read said. Earlier Tuesday, an independent lab had reported larger numbers to DHEC and the agency had not yet confirmed them as being solid COVID-19 cases.
In any case, from now on, DHEC will be reporting specific numbers on COVID-19 infections at nursing homes and other South Carolina care facilities every Tuesday and Friday, Read said.
There are some 19,000 residents in nursing homes in South Carolina.
The nation’s focus on nursing home and other long term care facilities’ infections and deaths continued to grow. A front-page story in the Wall Street Journal reported, “COVID-19 Death Toll Tops 10,000 at Facilities.” Earlier this week, the Trump Administration began requiring the reporting of long-term care coronavirus infections to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Up until now, the federal government had not tracked nursing home coronavirus cases.
Earlier this week, The State newspaper reported that DHEC was keeping secret the names of South Carolina nursing homes that had outbreaks of COVID-19. Within 24 hours, DHEC announced it would make public that information and released the names of more than 45 facilities with more than 200 cases. DHEC said it would start identifying nursing homes with deaths in the near future.
“For several months, we have been working through our infection prevention and care plan,” Lowman’s Dickinson said. “And that’s something that we actually go through with DHEC and the epidemiologists. We review that with them.
“We’ve been able to isolate those residents who are positive. They are all in one dedicated wing with dedicated staff. And so we were fortunate to be able to do that in the Heritage at Lowman, and that is the plan at others, is to do the isolation.”
A spokeswoman for Heartland Health & Rehabilitation Center in Hanahan, which has the state’s highest coronavirus figures at 57, said that institution is taking numerous sophisticated precautions now to prevent further cases.
“We know that the frail and elderly are especially susceptible to this virus,” said Julie Beckert of HCR ManorCare. “The health and well-being of our patients and employees remains our top priority.”
Measures that Heartland is taking include holding new admissions, taking regular symptom and temperature checks of all residents, making sure the facility has enough PPE (personal protective equipment) and staying connected with families, DHEC and the CDC, Beckert said.
Heartland also intends to create an airborne isolation unit to keep any virus particles out of the general air circulation at the facility.
Meanwhile, the CDC has published numerous instructions for the nation’s nursing homes.
“Given the high risk of spread once COVID-19 enters a long term care facility, facilities must act immediately to protest residents, families and staff from serious illness, complicaitons and death,” the CDC said.