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Hundreds of Pa. nursing homes haven't finished COVID-19 testing; local lab hired to help
Intelligencer Journal - 7/12/2020
A Lancaster County lab is helping test nursing home residents and staff for COVID-19, the Pennsylvania Department of Health said this week.
The department said Lancaster Laboratories Eurofins in Leola is being used as an overflow lab to assist the state's laboratory with testing it's requiring nursing homes to finish by July 24. It announced a similar partnership with Omnicare, a CVS Health company, about two weeks ago.
More than 300 of the state's 695 licensed nursing homes have completed the required testing, spokeswoman Maggi Mumma said in an email.
Lancaster Laboratories provides analytical testing services to the bio/pharmaceutical, food, environmental and medical device industries and is among the county's largest employers. It's owned by Eurofins Scientific, a Luxembourg-based firm that employs 25,000 people across 39 countries.
Pennsylvania has averaged 16,876 tests daily for the last two weeks, and the the state's lab can handle about 1,200 tests a day with 24-hour turnaround for results, according to the department.
The department did not say how much it's paying Eurofins per test, but noted that it has budgeted for roughly 40,750 tests, and the cost is being covered by a federal grant.
"Increased testing, especially in long-term care facilities, will help us determine the number of our most vulnerable Pennsylvanians who have been infected by COVID-19," Mumma wrote in an email. "Each individual who tests positive is followed through a case investigation and contact tracing."
As of Wednesday, the Lancaster County coroner's office said 301 of the 359 local deaths caused by COVID-19 were residents of nursing or personal care homes.
The state's most recent report shows 1,128 cases among residents and 313 among staffers at 45 of the county's nursing and personal care homes.
Statewide, the figure is 18,092 resident and 3,396 staffer cases at 732 facilities. On June 1, those figures stood at 15,545 resident and 2,663 staff cases at 608 facilities.
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