Three elderly Marion residents with COVID-19 have died
MARION — Three Marion County residents who had coronavirus have died, Marion Public Health confirmed Wednesday.
They were a 79-year-old woman who died on Tuesday, an 80-year-old woman who died on Sunday and an 89-year-old man who died on Saturday, according to Ohio Department of Health data and a press release issued Wednesday morning by Marion Public Health.
The three had tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, according to the health department.
Marion Public Health would not release any more information about the people who died, citing privacy concerns, and would not say if any of the three were residents of a Marion nursing home.
“On behalf of the entire Marion County community, we express our deepest sympathies to their families and friends,” Marion Public Health Commissioner Traci Kinsler said in the release.
More: Marion prison coronavirus outbreak seeping into larger community
There was not information immediately available on whether any of the three were hospitalized at the time of their death.
The three senior citizens represent the latest COVID-19-related deaths in Marion County’s general public since the first resident of the county to die from COVID-19-related causes on April 15, health officials have said.
All the other coronavirus-related deaths in Marion County have been prisoners at the Marion Correctional Institution, Kinsler has said, the prison that has suffered one of the country’s worst known coronavirus outbreaks.
The Ohio Department of Health was expected to update on Wednesday the numbers published weekly of long-term care facility residents who have died, but the updated numbers were not available by the Star’s print deadline.
Marion Public Health first reported an outbreak of the novel coronavirus at a Marion nursing home or assisted-living facility on May 7, at the Heartland of Marion nursing home.
More: Coronavirus: Outbreak reported at Heartland of Marion nursing home
On Tuesday, Kinsler said there were 25 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Heartland of Marion residents and staff, 21 of whom were residents.
Marion Public Health has been directing COVID-19 tests it receives from the state to the nursing home, where Kinsler said every resident has been tested for the respiratory disease.
She said residents who have tested negative but begin showing symptoms are tested again.
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