Coronavirus death toll up to 11 at Woodland nursing facility, Yolo County says
At least 11 residents at a Woodland skilled nursing facility have now died from complications of the coronavirus, with five additional patient deaths reported in a week, according to Yolo County health officials.
Stollwood Convalescent Hospital, located within the St. John’s Retirement Village campus on Woodland Avenue, is the site of the county’s first and only reported COVID-19 outbreak, with 66 total residents and staff members having tested positive.
County officials first disclosed an outbreak April 13 involving one patient death but did not initially name the facility. Yolo County public health officer Dr. Ron Chapman on April 21 confirmed the facility was Stollwood, and disclosed the death toll had risen to six.
Another five fatalities were reported the following week, according to a newly established online dashboard found on the Yolo County health department’s website. According to the dashboard, a total of 11 residents have died among 32 positive cases, with another 34 staff members testing positive. No staff have died. A total of 204 have been tested, the county says.
The skilled nursing facility has a total of 48 beds, according to the St. John’s website.
“St. John’s continues to assertively deliver preventive and immediate caregiving to fight COVID-19,” St. John’s CEO Sean Beloud wrote in a statement posted Tuesday to the retirement village’s website. “However, while following all of the CDC, CDPH, CDSS and Yolo County guidelines, we sadly lost more loved ones this week.”
Those who have tested positive at the Stollwood facility have been isolated, county officials said, and facility staff and residents are being closely monitored. All residents and their families have been notified of the outbreak, and Stollwood has implemented a number of preventive measures in recent weeks, including taking staff members’ temperatures before and after shifts.
Beloud wrote this week that St. John’s continues to work closely with hospice care, and that staff members who had been in quarantine and who have retested negative have “rejoined the workforce in a ‘refresher’ training on containing the spread of the virus.”
Yolo County as of Tuesday afternoon reported a total of 162 lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. A total of 16 people have died, including the 11 deaths at Stollwood. Exactly half of the confirmed cases, 81, have been reported in Woodland, according to the county public health website.
The state on Tuesday for the first time published data about COVID-19 fatalities at the state’s skilled nursing facilities. The data showed at least 578 of California’s more than 1,800 coronavirus deaths have come at skilled nursing facilities and, according to a report from the state Department of Social Services last Friday, another 144 residents in California assisted living facilities had died from complications of the virus.
This means that eldercare homes have accounted for about 40 percent of the state’s coronavirus deaths.
What is Stollwood Convalescent Hospital?
St. John’s Retirement Village houses more than 150 seniors among 13 cottages, 14 standard apartments, 32 “Personal Care Unit” apartments, 32 additional rooms dedicated to those with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, in addition to its 48-bed Stollwood Convalescent Hospital.
Earlier this month, the facility wrote it was “testing all employees and Stollwood residents for COVID-19,” had set up two “isolation wings” for those who test positive and that Yolo County was assisting by providing “contact investigations/tracing for any confirmed cases.”
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 showed California inspectors have cited 18 nursing homes throughout the state for serious violations of infectious disease rules that put residents in “immediate jeopardy.”
But Stollwood was 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.
