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A COVID-19 outbreak at a Deer Isle nursing home has become one of the largest and deadliest in Maine since the pandemic began in March.
Sixty-two residents and 31 staff at Island Nursing Home have tested positive for the coronavirus in just over three weeks since the first case was detected. Twelve residents have died, Island Nursing Home senior executive director Matthew Trombley said in a podcast on Tuesday.
“It was extremely difficult,” Trombley said in the podcast.
The 93 cases make the nursing home outbreak the fourth largest the state has seen since the pandemic began in March. Maine has seen 60 outbreaks of the virus in long-term care facilities since the spring.
Staff and administrators have done “everything we can” to mitigate the spread of the disease, since the nursing home’s first positive COVID test result on November 23, Trombley said. It helped the nursing home avoid “such a cataclysmic outcome as it could have been,” he said.
The facility is licensed for 38 beds in its skilled nursing facility, and has an additional 32 beds in its assisted living wing, where residents do not require nursing or rehabilitation.
Residents and staff were offered counseling services to cope with the loss, Trombley said. The Maine National Guard assisted with training and cleaning the facility for a week, but has not been to the nursing home since early December, he said.
On its Facebook page, nursing home officials said they determined, through contact tracing, that an employee who had no symptoms introduced the virus after catching it in the community and going to work.
Robert Long, spokesperson for the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said Thursday that the source of the outbreak was still under investigation.
There have been more deadly outbreaks in nursing homes in Androscoggin, Cumberland, Kennebec, Waldo and York counties, although they haven’t been by far more deadly. There have been 14 deaths associated with Durgin Pines in Kittery, which has experienced a new outbreak of COVID-19 in the past month and a half after overcoming a smaller one in the spring, and 13 each at Maine Veterans Home in Scarborough and Tall Pines in Belfast, according to the Maine CDC.
Nursing homes that have seen a higher number of cases are Russell Park Rehab and Living Center in Lewiston, with 159 staff and resident cases in total, Clover Health Care in Auburn with 150 total cases from two separate outbreaks , and Gray Birch in Augusta, who had 101 cases. Twelve people have each died at Clover Health Care and Gray Birch, while Russell Park has had six COVID-related deaths.
The outbreak at Island Nursing Home came as the COVID-19 pandemic spread through Maine and Hancock County. It was one of 14 new nursing home and assisted living outbreaks the state saw in November, even as state health officials said they saw a smaller proportion of COVID-19 cases in Maine linked to outbreaks. Maine has seen 17 more outbreaks in long-term care facilities since the start of December.
Some 165 residents of long-term care facilities have died in COVID-19 outbreaks, accounting for nearly 60% of coronavirus deaths in Maine.
Department of Health and Human Services inspectors visited the Deer Isle nursing home last week due to the outbreak, but the findings of their visit have not yet been finalized, said Jackie Farwell, door -speak of the department. The nursing home was found to comply with state rules in previous DHHS visits in June and September and in two off-site surveys in August.
Inspectors carried out the June visit as part of a series of inspections to see if nursing homes were following rules designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Federal health officials and pharmacies are expected to begin distributing doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to nursing homes in Maine starting next week. Long said the Maine CDC has no indication that nursing homes with active outbreaks will be prioritized.
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