Sacramento health officials focus on Elk Grove senior facility where resident has coronavirus
Sacramento County health officials on Tuesday focused their coronavirus prevention efforts on an senior living facility, one day after families were notified that a resident of an Elk Grove home had tested positive for the potentially deadly illness.
Sacramento County health chief Peter Beilenson said his agency is trying to prevent a repeat of what happened two weeks ago at a nursing home near Seattle, where the virus has caused a reported 15 deaths.
“We want to do everything we can to keep that from spreading, and so we’ve taken lessons learned from there,” he said.
A resident at Carlton Senior Living Elk Grove tested positive for the new coronavirus, according to an email sent to family members of residents Monday afternoon obtained by The Sacramento Bee.
The resident is hospitalized, the email said. The facility is asking visitors to postpone visits, the email said. Officials are also stopping group activities and are delivering meals to residents’ apartments, the email said.
It appears to be the first confirmed COVID-19 case in a California senior facility. County public health departments, however, have only released limited details about where individual cases are confirmed, so there could be more that have not been made public.
Beilenson confirmed the case at the senior living facility to The Sacramento Bee and said the county has immediately focused its limited testing ability on determining the health status of the other 140 residents of the home, almost all of whom are in the highest risk groups for the worst health effects should they contract the COVID-19 virus.
Beilenson lamented the lack of test kits available in the county.
“That’s the one priority that we’re using our 20 tests a day for,” Beilenson said. “I know they have more than 20 people there, and that’s part of the problem of not having enough tests, so we will do circles around the person who initially tested positive.”
Beilenson on Sunday said the county has been hampered by having only 20 kits a day to use, but said that could increase to more than 100 a day at the beginning of the week. Those kits, however, have not yet been made available.
Governor and Vice President: More tests coming
Vice President Mike Pence said on Tuesday the federal government will ship out 4 million test kits nationally to supplement the 1 million already in use.
At a press conference Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state is moving as well to expand its coronavirus testing capabilities, including in Sacramento.
Quest Diagnostics, a private clinical lab, he said, has begun testing for the virus at a site in San Juan Capistrano and is expected to open two more test labs in coming days, including at a site in Sacramento.
When all three Quest labs are operational, the company would be able to process more than 5,000 tests daily. Separately, two California hospitals and 18 labs are able to process coronavirus tests.
But Sacramento Congressman Ami Bera on Tuesday criticized the federal effort, saying it has been slow.
“Testing is slow,” he told McClatchy News, but said it should speed up with increased private-company testing and with efforts by the UC Davis Medical Center to do internal testing. “They could use some support from the CDC to get that up quickly. But let’s cut the bureaucratic red tape, let’s get those tests up as soon as possible.”
No family visits to Elk Grove senior home
The Elk Grove senior facility, formerly known as Carlton Plaza of Elk Grove, is at the corner of Elk Grove Boulevard and Bruceville Road. The facility can house up to 180 residents and recently had about 140 residents, according to a Department of Social Services report completed last year.
A representative of Carlton Senior Living did not return several messages seeking comment Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning.
The nursing home, in its Monday memo, asked family members not to visit during the quarantine period. “We understand that stopping visits can be very difficult, but please know we will be taking all recommended measures to assure our residents safety,” the email read.
But Beilenson, responding to questions from family members of residents, suggested some visits may be OK, if a family visitor meets screening requirements.
He said the facility is doing extra cleanings and will tell staff members displaying symptoms to go home. Everybody is wearing masks, he said, and residents are staying in their rooms and getting room service.
Darlene Lyttle of Galt said she is unsure if she should go visit her 79-year-old father, who’s been staying in the facility since September. She is worried she could contract the virus and bring it home to her mother, a lung cancer survivor with asthma who lives with her.
“I am worried because they’re all high risk and they’re in a home like that,” Lyttle, 58, said. “I can live through it. I’m not afraid of getting it. I just don’t want to spread it.”
Lyttle’s father has Alzheimer’s and doesn’t leave his room much, but Lyttle normally brings him things once or twice a week, she said. She’s not sure when she can go back.
Lyttle said she was disappointed she did not receive emails and calls from the facility about the resident who tested positive. When she called Tuesday, staff confirmed it was true and said they would keep her updated.
“I gave her my name and number and told her to add me to the list to keep me updated so I know when I can go back,” Lyttle said.
About Carlton senior living facility
Carlton Senior Living operates nursing homes and senior living facilities across the Sacramento region and Bay Area. Staff members have leaned on existing seasonal influenza protocols for months, and maintenance crews have increased how often they sanitize common areas, said Jessica Arnold, vice president of resident relations at Carlton. She spoke with The Bee in an interview Monday morning, shortly before the facility’s email was sent and did not say anything about the resident with the new coronavirus.
Late last month, facility management discouraged anyone showing signs of any illness — cold, flu or otherwise — from visiting all facilities.
Healthy family members are still allowed to visit residents in the company’s Sacramento County locations, Arnold said Monday morning. It was unclear what had changed since then. But in Santa Clara County, where at least 37 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed, public health officials had already advised even healthy people to avoid nursing homes.
Carlton Senior Living’s facilities in Santa Clara County on Monday morning were only allowing “necessary visits,” like those from health care professionals, in an attempt to stop the new coronavirus from sickening residents.
“We are doing everything we can to prevent this,” Arnold said.
Carlton Senior Living also has facilities in Concord, Davis, Fremont, Pleasant Hill, Sacramento, San Jose, San Leandro, Santa Rosa and Vallejo, according to its website.
Also on Monday, Sacramento County announced it was shifting to “community mitigation measures that will slow the spread of COVID-19 in the community, protect those who are most vulnerable to severe illness, and allow our health care system to prepare resources to take care of severely ill patients.”
That means it is no longer necessary for community members and health care workers who have been in contact with someone with COVID-19 to quarantine for 14 days, officials said. If anyone develops respiratory symptoms, however, they should stay home.
The Elk Grove Unified School District, the largest in northern California, closed schools this week because a high school student was being tested for coronavirus. That test came back negative, officials said Monday, but another student at an elementary-aged student in the district tested positive.
Sacramento County has 10 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including that student, officials announced on Monday.
One of the 10 people has recovered. Kim Nava, a county spokeswoman, would not say whether one of those positive tests was the individual from Carlton Senior Living. She also would not provide any age-range of those who have tested positive, where they reside or what their current conditions are.
Reporters Kate Irby and Sophia Bollag contributed to this report.
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This story was originally published March 10, 2020 at 9:27 AM with the headline "Sacramento health officials focus on Elk Grove senior facility where resident has coronavirus."
