Sacramento County nursing facility linked to 11 coronavirus deaths, nearly 170 cases
Coronavirus activity has exploded in recent weeks at two different Sacramento-area nursing homes, one of them with more than 10 deaths among nearly 100 resident cases.
Whitney Oaks Care Center in Carmichael, a licensed skilled nursing facility, says on its website that 94 residents and 75 employees have tested positive for COVID-19 since the pandemic started. Nine of the staff cases and 13 of the resident cases were considered active as of the Thursday update, the facility wrote.
The website does not mention deaths, but a California Department of Public Health data dashboard for COVID-19 activity at nursing facilities reports that 11 residents of Whitney Oaks have died. The state dashboard, last updated Thursday evening, also shows similar infection totals to those provided by Whitney Oaks: 88 all-time resident cases and 77 in health workers.
Whitney Oaks has just 126 beds, meaning the virus has afflicted, at least, close to three-quarters of its residents. Whitney Oaks’ statement points out that all 94 residents’ infections originated at the facility — in other words, no people were transferred there with active cases.
Citing privacy concerns, the CDPH nursing facility dashboard masks specific totals for infections and for deaths if they are above zero but lower than 11, denoting facilities’ counts in those categories as “<11.” Whitney Oaks reached the 11-death mark at some point this week.
On July 26, a Sunday, CBS 13 in Sacramento first reported that Whitney Oaks had 13 infected residents and 13 staff cases up to that point in the pandemic, along with one death confirmed that weekend.
Less than a month later, the combined total has grown more than sixfold to at least 169 resident and staff cases.
Whitney Oaks is a licensed skilled nursing facility with a special focus on occupational therapy and rehabilitation from injury, illness or surgery, according to its website.
Another large outbreak ongoing at Elk Grove facility
Whitney Oaks is now one of two Sacramento County long-term care facilities linked to more than 100 combined staff and resident coronavirus cases, according to the state dashboard.
A major outbreak is ongoing at Windsor Elk Grove Care and Rehabilitation Center: 55 active resident cases among 83 infections over the course of the pandemic, plus another 33 positive tests among employees, according to CDPH nursing facility data. Between one and 10 residents have died at Windsor Elk Grove.
Windsor operates nearly 40 facilities across California. The company’s El Camino Care Center, also in Carmichael, has had 30 residents and 19 staff test positive, according to the state dashboard. At least one resident there has died.
Employees at the Windsor Care Center of Sacramento, the company’s third elderly care center in Sacramento County, this one in North Sacramento, in late May authorized a strike after alleging that management had not been providing the necessary testing or personal protective equipment to staff. That site’s administrator, Suzanne Peck, in a statement defended the facility’s protocols and called the strike authorization “unnecessary and totally inappropriate.”
Windsor’s website as of Friday doesn’t include specific information about the magnitude of its coronavirus outbreaks, but it is topped with a large banner labeled “COVID-19 updates,” including a “24/7 family communication” hotline for those with loved ones in the care of a Windsor home.
Windsor Sacramento has a one-star health inspection rating, the lowest possible, with the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, and Windsor El Camino has a two-star rating.
But the company’s Elk Grove location has five stars, the best rating possible. Whitney Oaks has a four-star rating.
How many Sacramento COVID-19 deaths are linked to senior homes?
As of Thursday, Sacramento County public health officials reported just under 15,000 total COVID-19 cases among the county’s 1.5 million residents, 230 of whom have died.
The county at the end of last week reported 463 cases and at least 66 deaths connected to “congregate facilities,” a grouping that includes skilled nursing homes, assisted living facilities and others like mental health, alcohol or drug treatment facilities. The congregate facility section of the county’s COVID-19 dashboard is updated weekly on Fridays and has not yet been updated for this week; these numbers are from Aug. 14.
Of the 230 total virus deaths in the county, 108 have been in residents ages 80 or older. Another 45 who died were in their 70s.
