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PITTSFIELD – As COVID infections increase in Pittsfield, cases have also increased among residents and staff at nursing homes in Pittsfield and Lenox.
In the past few days, 21 tests at the 265-bed Hillcrest Commons Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Pittsfield have yielded positive results. Of those on Friday afternoon, 13 infections involved residents and eight were staff members. Some test results are pending.
At the 74-bed Kimball Farms Nursing Center in Lenox, 14 residents and three employees are infected.
Two epidemiologists from the State Department of Public Health visited Hillcrest on Thursday to look at infection control methods, said Lisa Gaudet, a spokeswoman for Berkshire Healthcare, which owns the two facilities and four others in the county.
The agency also wanted to know what the facility had done right, she said, as it is the latest of more than 400 nursing homes in the state to experience an outbreak.
Hillcrest currently has 224 residents.
“As we learned along the way, the larger the community, the larger the community, and that includes all aspects of the community,” Gaudet said.
She said all of the company’s nursing homes had learned how to separate infected residents from others and how to properly use masks and other personal protective equipment. The company also stockpiled PPE in the months when the gap had eased somewhat.
“It’s easier to navigate now than in March,” she says. “We are better prepared to enter this next wave.”
On its website, the company also compiles test results from all of its facilities and updates them daily at 5 p.m.
The outbreaks are said to be the first at a Berkshire County nursing home since the virus tore through the Williamstown Commons nursing and rehabilitation center last spring, killing 24 residents.
The virus had also claimed four residents of the Fairview Commons nursing and rehabilitation center in Great Barrington.
Berkshire Healthcare also owns Williamstown, Fairview and 13 other nursing homes in the state, as well as three retirement homes.
Pittsfield has seen 204 positive tests in the past two weeks. Lee got 19, Dalton got 18, and Lenox got 12.
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