Results pending from facility-wide testing event
A positive COVID-19 case at Clay County Care Center in Hayesville prompted our local health department last week to conduct facility-wide testing on 172 residents and staff.
Clay County Health Department Director Stephanie Johnson confirmed that a resident had tested positive, but declined to give further information to protect the person’s identity.
“The individual is in isolation at a local hospital,” Johnson said.
“As a result of having a confirmed positive case, we initiated a facility-wide testing initiative,” said Johnson. “This is a part of our Long Term Care Facility Action Plan that we completed in May that walks through such an occurrence step-by-step with standardized protocols in place that address staffing concerns and assistance, the arrangement of outside care needs, transportation needs and equipment needs both anticipated and contingent plans.”
On July 9, health department workers conducted the second facility-wide COVID-19 tests at the care center since April 17. In April the health department tested 178 people there, all of which returned negative. Testing was conducted as a precaution after a staff worker presented symptoms at a local emergency department, but that person’s test returned negative.
When asked if the July testing went as smooth as April Johnson said it did, but acknowledged both rounds of testing have been learning experiences.
“All-in-all, this process went very smooth. From start to finish the entire testing period was less than three hours for almost 200 people,” she said. “We had taken a lot of lessons learned from the first testing we did in April and applied it to the latest round, but we also learned new ways to operate from this experience as well. Overall, I am thrilled with the collaboration between all of our staffs that made this possible.”
Results from last week’s care center tests are expected by July 17.
“We are anticipating all test results will be in no later than Friday based on the current wait times we are seeing with Lab Corp,” Johnson said.
In the meantime as has been the case since mid-March, the care center is closed to visitors and residents are not participating in group activities. Other steps have been taken as well.
“I was told the CCCC administration and nursing staff have increased their isolation protocols past what they were doing before,” said Johnson. “Staff is using extra caution with the utilization of full PPE donning for each resident and they have increased disinfection and sterilization protocols past the additional measures they enacted previously. “
Overall in Clay County, 504 people have been tested. As of Tuesday, 481 returned negative, 22 were positive and 13 were reported as recovered. There are nine active positive cases and results of 23 other tests are pending, according to the health department’s most recent update on July 14.
The 504 total reflects the April facility-wide testing at the care center, but not the July event.
When asked if there were any common threads as far as location, etc., in contact tracing positive cases in the county, Johnson said nothing specific has been defined.
“We will be releasing information later this week about some of the trends we have been noticing in testing as well as the positive cases we have had,” she said. “I will say there has been no defined common thread that stands out in terms of one particular potential transmission location for our county.”
Last week, Gov. Roy Cooper announced that testing may be requested without a doctor’s referral. In addition, testing sites have been established mostly in central North Carolina, but at this point no location or date has been announced for Clay County.
“We know that prevention methods work: washing hands for a minimum of 20 seconds with soap and hot water, wearing masks and using social distancing,” Johnson said in this week’s COVID update. “We know that more than half of our residents that have had positive tests have recovered and we know that our professional staffs are competent and capable of handling what comes our way. Lastly, we know that our community has supported us and our neighbors during this time, for which we are grateful.”