UPDATE:
Eighteen residents of the Treyton Oak Towers senior living facility in Old Louisville have tested positive for coronavirus along with five staff members, Gov. Andy Beshear said at a press conference on Wednesday evening.
Beshear said over 100 tests have been allocated to the facility, and a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expert has been sent there to talk with staff about personal protective equipment.
Beshear said that, as of Wednesday’s press briefing, 72 residents and 33 staff have tested positive for the virus at 25 facilities. Beshear said 13 residents of Kentucky nursing homes have died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
Treyton Oak Towers didn’t respond to a request for comment.
ORIGINAL STORY:
Twelve residents of the Treyton Oak Towers senior living facility in Old Louisville have tested positive for coronavirus along with one staff member, a spokesperson for Gov. Andy Beshear has confirmed.
Treyton Oak Towers houses people requiring a range of services, from independent apartments to skilled nursing care. The nursing home is designated a four-star facility by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, which means the facility’s overall rating is above average for long-term care facilities, but inspections have found problems with infection control in recent years.
Treyton Oak Towers has yet to provide comment and further confirmation regarding deaths or hospitalizations at the facility.
Beshear said at a press briefing on Tuesday that 55 residents and 22 staff have tested positive for the virus at 21 facilities. Beshear said 11 residents of Kentucky nursing homes have died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
At least seven residents and three staff members have now tested positive at a nursing home in Lyon County. But as of Tuesday evening, Treyton Oak Towers appears to be the biggest outbreak reported at a Kentucky nursing home so far.
Beshear said the state has provided facilities with masks, eliminated communal activities and “basically banned” visitors at nursing home facilities to prevent the spread of the in long-term care facilities.
“This is a concern. We’ve got to make sure that we prevent the coronavirus from getting in as many of these facilities as possible and we need to react quickly and swiftly when it does happen,” Beshear said. As of Tuesday, 55 tests associated with residents of long-term care facilities were still pending along with 41 tests for staff members.
The facility has previously been cited for at least one infection control issue that federal regulators said “has caused or is likely to cause serious injury, harm, impairment, or death to a resident.” An inspection conducted in March of 2019 by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that the facility used a single hand-held meter to collect blood samples from all residents.
According to the report, the meter was soiled and used to test residents who were in isolation for an undisclosed medical condition, as well as residents who were not in isolation.
The inspector interviewed an infection preventionist on staff who was not aware of any documented cleaning of the meter, “and was concerned if the meter was not properly cleaned, there could be cross contamination and the spread of infection.”
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says the problem was corrected within 11 days.
This story was updated after Gov. Andy Behear’s press conference on Wednesday, announcing more positive cases at Treyton Oak Towers.
Jacob Ryan contributed to this report. Contact Jared Bennett at (502) 814.6543 or jbennett@kycir.org.
