Nursing home deaths continue to rise, facilities hit hard in the spring starting to see deaths once again

Another 68 nursing home residents died last week of the coronavirus and while outbreaks continued at facilities from North Branford to West Hartford to Tolland, another ominous trend is emerging: Some of the facilities that were hardest hit in the spring are starting to see deaths once again.

For the second week in a row 70% of the state’s deaths over a seven-day period (Nov. 18-24) were in long-term care facilities, which accounted for 68 of the 987 deaths in that period, according to data released by the state Department of Public Health Friday.

In addition to the deaths there were 413 new COVID-19 cases overall. Last week there were 39 deaths in long-term care facilities and 309 infections.

The increases in both infections and deaths continues a trend over the past few weeks. As the virus has spread through communities it also has spread into their nursing homes.

While the state has been keeping a close eye on COVID naive facilities -- nursing homes that had no cases or deaths until this most recent outbreak -- the numbers released Friday show that several facilities that were hit hard in the spring are getting hit again.

Shady Knoll Health Care in Seymour, Ludlowe Center for Health and Rehabilitation in Fairfield and Sheridan Woods Health Care in Bristol have all had new deaths in the past week. All were hit hard in the spring and are among the top 10 overall in terms of deaths since the virus struck in March.

Bristol is the center of an outbreak this week with three of its five nursing homes recording deaths.

Two other facilities that recorded many deaths in the spring -- Riverside Health Care Center in East Hartford and Abbott Terrace in Waterbury -- also recorded deaths but both are taking in residents from other facilities.

Riverside is one of four COVID recovery facilities in the state so it gets residents from other facilities, while Abbott Terrace has been taking residents of both Mattatuck Health Care Center in Waterbury and the Watertown Convalarium.

Outbreaks continued this week at the Hebrew Center for Health and Rehabilitation in West Hartford, which had five more deaths and 13 in the past two weeks, The Jefferson House in Newington, which had three new deaths this week and 12 in the past two weeks, and at Evergreen Woods in North Branford, which had six new deaths and 10 in the past two weeks.

Connecticut health officials are planning to reopen a second COVID-19 recovery facility in Torrington and are looking at opening others, possibly in southeastern Connecticut, to battle the second surge of the coronavirus in the state’s nursing homes.

The facilities are designed to help handle an influx of nursing home residents leaving hospitals -- and also to prevent outbreaks in nursing homes.

Last week, a COVID recovery facility was reopened in Meriden and quickly started to fill up with more than 40 residents admitted in the first week -- more than it had the entire spring.

The facilities were initially set up to take in discharged hospital patients who were positive but couldn’t return to the long-term care facility where they lived. Now, nursing homes are also transferring residents to the facility to either try to thwart a full-scale outbreak in their facility or because they don’t have the staff to handle an outbreak.

Several of the residents that have moved into Westfield came from a facility in Tolland which had a major outbreak. Woodlake at Tolland has had 63 positive cases out of 76 residents in the past two weeks. They have had one death.

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