Testing has been thrown on its head. We test last Monday and across the campus only had one positive, a 2nd time positive in Chateau. The feedback we are getting from the state is the recurrence of positives for our elderly population is not a surprise as it may take them longer to completely remove the antibodies that are detectable. However, the CDC requirement is to re-start testing after 90 days from a positive result. Total positive cases to date for the Care Center is 40 residents and 36 staff members while at Chateau 51 residents and 31 staff members.
Recently, the FDA issued a report for the lab we were using for testing concerned with false negatives. The lab indicated their testing procedures were accurate it was the user not obtaining a complete sample that was causing false negatives. Last week we were notified by the state they had terminated the contract with this company, and we were to receive further information related to surveillance testing. We were notified on Monday we will now use the state lab for testing moving forward. We have experience with the lab as we utilized them for testing for approximately 1 month before moving to the commercial lab. We will have to monitor the timeliness of the state lab returning results as this was our issue with some tests taking 7-10 days to return results. In addition, the lab has informed us days we should not test so we scheduled our testing plan with this direction in mind. This has caused a temporary “hiccup” in our process, but we are restarting our testing process later this week.
Active outbreaks are at 100 (down from 107 last week) still active in the community with 19 of those being in health facilities/entities. Positives for through yesterday for January are 799. The positivity rate for Pueblo county has been on a slow decline since the middle of December. Parkview Hospital continues to see decreased hospitalizations related to COVID with 33 cases as of yesterday while St Mary Corwin also has no COVID case in their care. Yesterday Parkview reported occupancy at 186 while St Mary Corwin is reporting 22 for occupancy. This leaves 77 available beds between the hospitals.
Chateau’s first clinic was a success. We administered the vaccine to 51 residents with 6 declining on the day of the clinic. Staff vaccinations were completed by 14 of the 30 staff members. Our next clinic is scheduled for 10 Feb 21. The last scheduled clinic for Sharmar will occur on 8 Feb 21 and those staff and residents who received the 1 st shot last week will be provided with the second dose. The county report has indicated the 2nd round testing is completed in the hospitals and is underway in the long-term care settings. To date, 12,321 first doses and 2,339 second doses have been reported administered through yesterday.
Please contact the facilities with your questions and I appreciate your patience with our return calls to address your concerns or questions.
Sincerely,
Keith Jackson
Executive Director
