Long-term care facilities closely monitoring COVID-19 surge
WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) – The omicron-driven COVID-19 surge is hitting schools, hospitals and long-term care facilities.
This week’s KDHE cluster data shows nearly 200 long-term care settings have active clusters. It accounts for about a third of the state’s current clusters with about 3,400 cases.
It has these centers remaining cautious to keep the virus out.
“We had the original COVID go through our building, and it was just really devastating. We don’t want that to happen again,” said Elizabeth Howarth, the Homestead Health Center Administrator.
That’s what Homestead Health Center in Wichita is achieving, keeping the virus out and providing relief for Administrator Elizabeth Howarth.
She said, “Glad that our residents are safe.”
She is closely following the county’s numbers, which have reached pandemic highs this month, with concern.
“A lot,” said Howarth, “A lot because our staff are out in the community.”
Howarth said the recent cases at the Homestead have all been among staff, with no residents testing positive.
“That’s been going on since the first of the year,” she said. “We get one or two [staff] that are positive, and they’re out for five days, and about the time they come back, we get two or three more.”
Howarth said part of the cautious approach is sending staff home with positive symptoms.
“We’ve really been very diligent about even if staff are sick. If they come in and say, well, I think I have, it’s probably just allergies. Nope, you stay home,” said Howarth.
She added, “We decided it’s not worth having someone in here and sick. We’ll do what we can to make sure our residents are safe and taken care of.”
When the staff return from quarantine, they’re also tested. The staff at Homestead is working to step in as needed.
They are doing weekly testing for residents and staff, the staff is now wearing N95 or KN95 masks and family members of residents are helping to make sure their family members stay safe.
“Families have been great. They’ve been very good about making sure that they wear masks. That no one comes in sick. We did have one family member who called us a couple days after she had been here and said that her daughter had tested positive and that she had been around her daughter. In turn, she had been around her month [at Homestead], so we just kind of watched her mom, and she never did test positive or anything,” said Howarth.
Howarth said another essential part is the vaccine.
“The fact that they [residents] all have their vaccine, fully vaccinated and have boosters just shows that vaccinations do work,” she said.
While COVID-19 provides enough to worry about, that’s not the only challenge for facilities like Homestead, where staffing has become a significant challenge.
“We need nurses. We need CNAs,” said Howarth.
Howarth said they’ve been relying on staffing agencies to make the difference for the last few months. While they can be expensive, she said it’s worth it.
She said, “We have at least three shifts that we do not have anybody in. They’re just totally open. Agencies come in and fill those shifts, and without them, it would have been a lot worse.”
Homestead has seen a few applications come in for their openings, but Howarth said it remains vital to bring in the best candidate.
“We don’t want to just fill a spot with a warm body. We want somebody who is going to actually be able to be a part of our environment and be a positive part of it,” she said.
Testing supplies have been another challenge.
Six months ago, Homestead was well stocked, but those supplies became harder to find after the surge.
Homestead has recently received some more rapid test kits from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to help meet their needs.
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