Three people from the Ambassador Nursing and Rehabilitation Center have died. (Photo: Google Maps)
Detroit's coronavirus death rate is being driven in part by the illness' spread to elderly people in nursing homes, with one local epidemiologist estimating the population now accounts for about quarter of hospital fatalities.
Dr. Teena Chopra, the Detroit Medical Center's director of hospital epidemiology and infection prevention, tells Huffington Post the growing mortality rate among the region’s nursing home population is “astonishing.”
On Wednesday, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan reported the death of at least 12 Covid-19 patients from nursing homes and infections within 14 facilities. But that data is a week behind, and DMC Sinai-Grace Hospital's chief geriatrician tells HuffPost nursing home admissions have spiked dramatically in recent days.
Duggan said Thursday that the city would ramp up testing at the city's nursing homes, targetting up to two homes a day beginning with those that have the highest rates of infection. It will use a portion of its alottment of rapid-testing kits that can return results within 15 minutes.
The virus has taken the lives of at least two residents and one staffer at Ambassador Nursing and Rehabilitation Center on the city's east side, where demonstrators were reportedly planning to protest poor working conditions Thursday.
The facilities are particularly susceptible to the spread of the illness, as they house elderly and/or infirm residents in often close-quarters, with staff required to provide hands-on assistance with things like bathing and going to the bathroom.
Huffington Post highlights additional reasons nursing homes present a unique challenge:
Long-term care facilities ― a category that includes not only nursing homes, but also assisted living facilities that cater to residents with less intense needs ― are famously understaffed. Employees are typically rushing from resident to resident, which makes it harder to observe basic hygiene and safety protocols like thorough hand-washing.
... And many nursing home staffers have part-time positions at several facilities, which means a worker can pick up an illness at one and then infect people at another.
Assessing and treating elderly nursing home patients is challenging because it’s difficult for many to communicate and their bodies may exhibit fewer signs of an infection.
Some suffer from immunosenescence, or the deterioration of the immune system, and don’t have the same antibody response as those with healthy immune systems. That means they won’t develop a fever, a common sign of infection, even if they’re fighting COVID-19.
Many patients are also mentally declining, have dementia, are recovering from a stroke, or have some other condition that makes communicating symptoms difficult. ...
“By the time they come to the hospital, it’s very late and some of them are dying after a few days,” Chopra said.
She said treatment is further complicated by the fact that some suffer from a multitude of health problems that require additional resources, like a team of doctors to make decisions and provide care.
Nursing homes suspended visits early into the outbreak in an effort to prevent its spread.
