Update: Woodland nursing home identified as site of 55-person coronavirus outbreak
A retirement and assisted-living campus in Woodland has been identified as the site of a coronavirus outbreak where two dozen residents and nearly three dozen staff members recently tested positive.
Yolo County officials announced in a Monday news release that 23 residents and 12 staffers at an undisclosed nursing facility within the county had tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the highly contagious coronavirus, and that one of those residents has died. It is the first such outbreak at a nursing facility within the county, the news release said.
The county did not name the facility, citing patient privacy concerns, but in an update later that afternoon, prompted in response to “rumors” circulating throughout the community, said it was located in Woodland. Independent reporting by The Bee confirmed it was the Stollwood Convalescent Hospital at St. John’s Retirement Village before the state released its name among a dataset of all California elder care facilities with COVID-19 cases among its patients and staff.
Stollwood is St. John’s campus’ dedicated nursing home.
In Friday’s release by the state, the facility’s infections had grown. More than double the staffers, up to 31, and one additional patient, for a total of 24, were reported to have confirmed cases of the coronavirus, the state detailed.
St. John’s Retirement Village, a 14-acre nursing and assisted-living campus on Woodland Avenue that includes apartments, cottages and a convalescent hospital, in a Thursday post to its website titled “St. John’s Retirement Village COVID-19 Update,” said that the complex has set up “two isolation wings for residents testing positive for COVID-19,” that it is immediately notifying residents who test positive and their family members, and that it is receiving assistance from county health officials in handling confirmed cases.
According to its website, St. John’s houses more than 150 seniors among 13 cottages, 14 standard apartments, 32 “Personal Care Unit” apartments, 32 additional rooms dedicated to those with Alzheimers and dementia, in addition to its 48-bed Stollwood Convalescent Hospital.
An emailed request for comment sent by The Bee to representatives of St. John’s was forwarded and responded to by Yolo County spokeswoman Jenny Tan, who declined to confirm the identity of the facility, “to protect those that are at the nursing home so that they can get better without worrying about their privacy.” St. John’s Executive Director Sean Beloud’s voicemail also redirected news inquiries to Tan.
The facility, in its Thursday update, wrote that it is “testing all employees and Stollwood residents for COVID-19,” and that Yolo County is assisting by providing “contact investigations/tracing for any confirmed cases.” On Friday morning, Tan confirmed that the county is only aware of one nursing facility outbreak at this time.
“If people are worried about whether or not it’s at their loved one’s facility, family members of residents have already been notified so if they have not been notified, it is not at their loved one’s facility,” Tan wrote in an email.
St. John’s in its statement also wrote that it has “trained and assimilated” additional health care staffers at Stollwood.
A total of 23 positive tests would represent about half of the capacity of Stollwood, the dedicated nursing home on the St. John’s campus.
No updated figures for the nursing facility have been provided by the county since Monday, but Yolo County as a whole has seen a spike in both confirmed infection totals and fatalities this week.
The county public health department on Wednesday reported three new fatalities, two of them in Woodland. Seven in total have died in Yolo County from the coronavirus as of Friday morning.
Lab-confirmed coronavirus cases throughout the county have also jumped sharply, at 125 as of Thursday evening compared with 37 early last week. The fourth death reported countywide was a resident at the Woodland facility, Tan said; it is unknown whether any other residents of the nursing facility are among the remaining six fatalities.
In an April 6 COVID-19 update posted to its website, St. John’s wrote that it was restricting visitors to only essential health personnel; instituting social distancing of six feet; suspending group dining and other activities; and taking residents’ temperatures daily, as well as staff members’ temperatures upon arrival to and departure from each shift.
Nursing homes across California are vulnerable
In early March, Sacramento County health officials focused coronavirus prevention efforts on a senior living facility in Elk Grove, where six residents have tested positive for COVID-19, and one of them died from the disease. The county officials wanted to prevent a situation similar to a coronavirus outbreak at a Seattle-area nursing home, where dozens were infected with COVID-19 and at least 37 have died.
Stollwood is licensed as a skilled nursing facility, according to the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development website.
A recent Sacramento Bee review of state and federal records show that California inspectors have cited 18 nursing homes throughout the state for serious violations of infectious disease rules that put residents in “immediate jeopardy.” The records review also found approximately 82 percent of the nearly 1,200 nursing homes — 976 separate facilities — in California have been cited with some sort of infection prevention and control violation in the past two years.
Stollwood is not among those worst offenders. In fact, its track record appears very solid: Medicare.gov rates the overall quality of the convalescent hospital a perfect five stars, “much above average,” with a four-star, above-average health inspection rating as well.
A Bee review of inspection reports for the convalescent hospital found that the only infection-relevant violation at Stollwood appears to have come in October 2018, when an inspector noticed low-level problems with hand-washing. The facility has received just four health citations, compared with a statewide average of 13.1. All were considered minor and none resulted in fines.
About one-third of elder-care homes in California have reported coronavirus cases, The Sacramento Bee reported Friday.
This story was originally published April 17, 2020 at 9:50 AM.
