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COVID outbreaks reported at Placerville, Auburn nursing homes as California sees surge

Sacramento Bee - 1/10/2022

Jan. 10—At least two nursing homes in the greater Sacramento area are experiencing significant COVID-19 outbreaks as senior facilities across California are now seeing a steep rise in transmission amid the omicron surge.

The Pines at Placerville, a 99-bed skilled nursing facility in El Dorado County, in an update to its website said it had 32 residents with COVID-19 in its coronavirus isolation unit as of Sunday, as well as 12 staff members testing positive in the past month.

Westview Healthcare Center in Auburn, a larger facility with 205 beds, had 19 COVID-positive residents in isolation Sunday and has had 30 employees test positive in the past month. Of those 30, eight remained unavailable to work as of Sunday due to active infections.

Those two are among the state's largest active resident outbreaks within skilled nursing facilities, according to a data dashboard maintained by the California Department of Public Health, which confirmed similar numbers as the two facilities' websites.

The CDPH data tracker redacts exact infection numbers for facilities with fewer than 11 active cases. As of a Sunday evening update, 57 of the state's more than 1,200 licensed skilled nursing homes had at least 11 active resident cases.

A large majority of the current outbreaks are in Southern California or the Bay Area, but a few have come in Northern California and the Central Valley.

A much longer list — 250 facilities statewide — had at least 11 active cases among employees.

Westview Healthcare Center and The Pines at Placerville as of Sunday's update were the only skilled nursing facilities above the 11-resident-case threshold within the six-county region of Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba. A handful of other sites in the region had between 11 and 15 active staff cases, but fewer than 11 resident cases.

The dashboard shows the statewide total for nursing home resident cases has exploded in recent weeks.

Skilled nursing facilities in California were ravaged by the coronavirus throughout 2020, peaking that December at a seven-day average of more than 725 new infections across all 1,200-plus sites.

After the winter 2020 surge subsided and as vaccines became widely available, daily case rates held in the single digits between late March and mid-July, state data shows. Transmission increased during the delta variant surge, but severe outbreaks were largely mitigated, peaking at about 40 daily statewide cases in summer and fall of 2021.

But cases have been soaring at skilled nursing facilities since just after Christmas, the state dashboard shows: the daily average increased from 38 cases the week ending Dec. 26 to 137 the week of Jan. 2 and 234 the week of Jan. 6, the most recent date with that metric available.

In other words, the case rate amid the omicron surge is now about six times higher than the peak of the delta variant surge at California's senior living facilities — which house some of the state's must vulnerable residents.

More than 9,400 of California's 76,500 COVID-19 deaths over the course of the entire pandemic have come from residents of skilled nursing facilities; another 242 have come from employees of those sites, CDPH reports.

It is difficult to predict how many deaths may come from the emerging nursing home outbreaks.

Nursing facilities have some of the state's highest vaccination rates — 88% of skilled nursing residents statewide are fully vaccinated, according to CDPH — and health officials say vaccines continue to provide strong protection from severe illness with omicron.

But on the other end, older residents have had far higher mortality rates than younger infected people throughout the pandemic. Just over 70% of California's COVID-19 deaths have come in residents 65 or older.

Research has also indicated that the omicron variant may generally produce milder disease than delta or earlier variants. However, there is less data available on omicron's severity with specific regard to seniors.

The Pines at Placerville has already reported 18 resident deaths from COVID-19 in prior outbreaks, according to the CDPH data dashboard. Westview Healthcare Center has reported 14.

Booster, testing requirements for nursing home visits

CDPH in a health order announced Dec. 31 and that went into effect last Friday has required visitors to be fully vaccinated and, if eligible, boosted in order to conduct most indoor visits at skilled nursing homes.

The order also required guests, regardless of vaccination status, to produce proof of a recent negative test in order to visit.

"Given the greater transmissibility of the omicron variant, the risk of outbreaks in long-term care settings is of particular concern given the medical vulnerability of residents in such settings," CDPH director and state public health officer Dr. Tomás J. Aragón wrote in a Dec. 31 statement, amending an earlier health order on nursing facility visits.

"Furthermore, based on the experience from prior COVID-19 surge periods during which high morbidity and mortality was experienced by residents and staff within such long-term care settings, the impact of such facility outbreaks may be devastating."

The visitation order will remain in place through at least Feb. 7.

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