30 active coronavirus cases, 1 death at Sacramento County senior facility, state says
An assisted living facility in south Sacramento County is in the midst of a large coronavirus outbreak, reporting 30 total cases among residents and staff members since late June along with one resident death during the pandemic.
Eighteen elderly residents and 12 employees at Skypark Gardens, located on Sky Parkway just east of Highway 99, had COVID-19 cases that were considered active as of Monday, according to a Tuesday report from the California Department of Social Services. An additional confirmed case at Skypark Gardens not labeled active is a resident who died of the respiratory disease, the report indicates.
The state agency defines an active coronavirus case as a lab-confirmed infection detected within the past 29 days in which the infected person has not died, which means the 30 positive tests came less than a month ago.
With the report showing Sacramento County as having a total of 60 active infections among assisted living facilities with seven or more beds, Skypark made up half of the county’s reported active case total at assisted living homes above that size threshold at the time of reporting.
Reached by phone Wednesday, Skypark Gardens administrator Sherry Richardson declined The Bee’s request for comment.
The facility’s website includes a page dedicated to its COVID-19 health and safety protocols, but as of Wednesday morning the site did not include any statement relating to its positive cases. It’s unknown whether residents’ family members have been notified privately of the outbreak, such as by phone or email.
State licensing information shows Skypark Gardens has 144 beds, which puts it among Sacramento County’s larger assisted living homes.
Assisted living eldercare homes, which the state report refers to formally as “Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly,” are generally permanent residences for the elderly that do not provide the same level of medical care as skilled nursing facilities (nursing homes).
Citing “privacy and security concerns,” charts within the state report mask true values for infection and death figures that are between one and 10 at individual facilities, listing them only as “<11” rather than giving an exact value. For facilities with 11 or more staff cases, resident cases or deaths, an exact number is given.
Tuesday’s report also includes a “cumulative” list of 173 facilities statewide with at least seven beds that have confirmed at least one COVID-19 infection since the start of the pandemic. This portion of the daily reports had been omitted by the Department of Social Services in Monday’s report, after the agency quietly announced in a memo last week that it would be deleting the names of facilities with COVID-19 deaths from its website.
No explanation for that decision was given. After being contacted Monday by The Bee regarding the removal of data, the state restored the fuller list in Tuesday’s update and an agency spokesman said the absence in recent editions was a mistake, though the change had already concerned advocacy groups that seek reform for nursing and eldercare homes.
Of the 173 total facilities shown Tuesday, 44 had at least 11 total active cases, including both staff and residents.
Skypark is the only Sacramento-area assisted living home on the shorter list of 44 active outbreaks, with the majority of the rest in Southern California or the Bay Area.
But Sacramento County has 10 facilities named among the 173 listed as having reported any cases to the state agency since the pandemic started. Along with Skypark, the remaining nine have each also reported at least one resident dying from COVID-19, with none reporting more than 10 deaths.
At Skypark Gardens, the entry on the shorter list shows 12 employee cases and 18 active resident cases. The cumulative list for all-time infections shows the same number of employee cases but 19 resident cases at the facility. The chart’s death column shows Skypark reporting at least one, but fewer than 11, resident fatalities.
Taken together, these figures indicate Skypark has reported exactly one confirmed resident death as of Monday’s date of reporting.
Other COVID-19 clusters in Sacramento assisted living homes
At least 26 residents of Sacramento County assisted living homes have died from COVID-19, the state reported this week. The report says no assisted living staff have died in the county. A total of 539 staff and residents have died across California, the report says.
Since the start of the pandemic, Sacramento County assisted-living facilities have accounted for at least 213 lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases, 129 of them in residents and 84 among staff, the recent state report says.
Some of the county’s assisted living home outbreaks listed Tuesday were disclosed in earlier data releases from the state and first reported by The Sacramento Bee months ago. Those include Sunrise Assisted Living’s locations in Sacramento and Fair Oaks; Carlton Senior Living in Elk Grove; and Oakmont in Folsom.
COVID-19 activity at those sites, as shown in Tuesday’s report, appears to have grown by relatively small amounts. Sunrise Assisted Living-Sacramento went from 23 staff infections in April to 24 as of the most recent report, with resident cases staying put at 25. Sunrise Assisted Living of Fair Oaks saw resident cases rise by one in that same span, from 16 to 17, with employee cases still below 11.
Carlton Senior Living in Elk Grove had six residents test positive as of late March, as The Bee reported at the time; Tuesday’s report shows total resident cases remain below 11, and somewhere between one and 10 staff members at Carlton have now contracted the virus.
Oakmont of Folsom Senior Living, where officials in late April informed residents and family members that 16 residents and five staff members had tested positive for COVID-19, has since seen six additional resident cases, while the infected employee total remains below 11.
Aside from Skypark, the largest local case cluster appearing on Tuesday’s list that was not previously reported by The Bee came at Summerset Assisted Living, in Rancho Cordova. At least 22 residents at Summerset have tested positive for COVID-19 as well as between one and 10 staff members; however, fewer than 11 of all those cases are currently considered active.
Rounding out Sacramento County’s portion of the list are senior facilities whose infection totals are less clear because they are smaller than 11: Eskaton Gold River Lodge, Eskaton Fountainwood Lodge in Orangevale, Fruitridge Villa and Greenhaven Estates. Greenhaven and the Eskaton location in Orangevale had between one and 10 staff cases; Eskaton Gold River and Fruitridge Villa reportedly had none.
Sacramento County’s health department, in its separate data dashboard, has reported 96 total deaths among all residents of the county as of Tuesday morning.
