Sedgwick County releases list of 14 more nursing homes with coronavirus outbreaks

Sedgwick County officials released a list of 14 more coronavirus clusters at local nursing homes, and some of them are having second outbreaks of COVID-19.

Sedgwick County’s new release called the clusters “newly identified,” though it did not specify how recently each of the outbreaks started. The county had gone nearly a month without reporting any new clusters at nursing homes. The last report to the health department’s dashboard came on Nov. 14.

The new locations were named late Wednesday afternoon after the health department’s COVID-19 dashboard earlier in the day showed 14 new clusters at long-term care facilities.

There have now been 62 clusters at long-term care facilities in Sedgwick County since the start of the pandemic. They account for approximately half of the 193 coronavirus deaths in the county. A cluster is generally defined as two or more positive cases linked to the same location and time.

The county identified the adult care homes “in order to promote transparency during this pandemic,” according to the news release.

Nursing homes in Sedgwick County and most of Kansas are required by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to test their staff for COVID-19 at least twice a week.

“These efforts are aimed at preventing the virus from entering nursing homes, improving a facility’s ability to detect cases quickly, and stopping transmission,” CMS officials said in an August statement announcing the testing mandate. “Swift identification of confirmed COVID-19 cases allows a facility to take immediate action to remove exposure risks to nursing home residents and staff.”

Gov. Laura Kelly on Wednesday announced a new executive order requiring 473 state-licensed long-term care facilities to follow the same testing rules required for federally licensed nursing homes.

In the most recent week of reporting, for Nov. 23-29, one-third of Kansas nursing homes had at least one resident test positive, the White House coronavirus task force said in Sunday’s report to the Sunflower State. More than half of the state’s nursing homes had a new staff member test positive. About one-in-five facilities had a resident die from COVID-19 during the week of Thanksgiving.

A nationwide rise in nursing home outbreaks and COVID-related deaths is primarily due to the worsening rates of community spread, said Mark Parkinson, president of the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living. Parkinson, who is a former Kansas governor, spoke Monday at a national teleconference held by AHCA/NCAL

“In order to protect our residents and caregivers, long term care providers need states to distribute the vaccine as soon as humanly possible and take aggressive action to reduce the level of COVID in their state,” Parkinson said.

“A one-month delay in distributing the vaccine to all long term care residents and caregivers, could result in more than 20,000 of our residents losing their life when a vaccine could have saved them.”

The 14 new outbreaks identified Wednesday by the Sedgwick County Health Department were:

• Ascension Via Christi Village-McLean at 777 N. McLean Blvd. has had 14 cases, with 13 staff and one resident.
• Christ Care Home Plus at 7901 W. Jennie St. has had five cases, with two staff and three residents.
• Life Care Center of Wichita at 622 N. Edgemoor St. has had 43 cases, with 14 staff and 29 residents.
• Healthcare Resort at 7057 W. Village Circle has had five cases, with four staff and one resident. This is apparently a second cluster.
• ResCare-21st St. has had 12 cases, with four staff and eight residents.
• Chaucer Estates at 10550 E. 21st St. has had a second cluster of 22 cases, with 10 staff and 12 residents. The first had five cases and one death when it closed.
• Homestead Health Center at 2133 S. Elizabeth has had 83 cases, with 28 staff and 55 residents.
• The Rosewood Cottage at 5516 E. Polo Dr. has had 11 cases, with six staff and five residents.
• The Regent-Legend Senior Living at 2050 N. Webb Rd. had had five cases, all of which were residents.
• Chisholm Place at 1859 N. Webb Rd. has had 12 cases, with eight staff and four residents. This is apparently a second cluster. The first had 50 cases and seven deaths when it closed.
• Diversicare of Haysville at 215 N. Lamar Ave. has had 31 cases, with six staff and 25 residents.
• Mount Hope Nursing Home at 704 E. Main St. has had 16 cases, with 12 staff and residents.
• Paradigm Services at 344 N. Wabash Ave. has had 16 cases, with 10 staff and six residents. This is apparently a second cluster.
• ResCare-Chelsea Street had had five cases, all of which are residents.

Sedgwick County on Wednesday also identified a new cluster at the Sedgwick County Juvenile Detention Facility at 700 S. Hydraulic. The county’s list reported fewer than five cases, all of whom are staff.

The county’s COVID-19 dashboard indicates there are three active cases connected to the cluster.

A county spokesperson initially declined to identify the juvenile jail outbreak after the dashboard on Tuesday showed a new cluster at a correctional facility.

This story was originally published December 9, 2020 at 7:01 PM.