COVID Hits Four Local Nursing Homes
Fayette County Emergency Management Chief Craig Moreau reported coronavirus outbreaks at four nursing and assisted living facilities in Fayette County.
“This current round of infections is thought to be linked to community spread,” Moreau said in an interview Wednesday, Sept. 9. “We are closely tracking the epidemiological trail and believe we have narrowed it down to a few people. We believe it is contained or will be contained shortly.”
When asked how the outbreak could take place at four facilities at the same time, Moreau responded: “We have limited resources in this county, and many people have family members who work at multiple facilities. You might have multiple people in one house who work at different facilities and it gets passed around.”
Moreau said he did not know the number of positive test results when the Record spoke with him on Wednesday, and he declined to speculate on the number of new cases. Moreau said the new cases include both staff members and residents at the facilities. “We are asking the State to come in for help testing and to help us take the next step,” Moreau said.
Some Fayette County nursing homes recently took on residents from facilities in Louisiana hit by Hurricane Laura, but Moreau said it is not believed any infections were a result of that. Before this outbreak, Fayette County had just 19 official active cases of COVID-19. The County was still reporting 19 cases Wednesday, but Moreau said the state has not provided the County with an updated list of test results since last Friday, Sept. 4. Moreau blamed the lag in new data on a recent change to the way the state reports test results to counties.
Moreau said the Department of State Health Services Region 7 switched to a “portal” system to update the counties of new cases instead of the previous system involving secured emails. He said the DSHS has not yet granted Fayette County access to see the data in the portal.
“I’m about to pull my hair out with this new system,” Moreau said. “I don’t know why, in the middle of things, they want to fix something that’s not broken.”