Nursing home in small eastern Kansas county has the state’s largest COVID-19 outbreak
The largest outbreak of coronavirus cases in Kansas is at a skilled nursing facility in Coffey County.
Officially, the eastern Kansas county of about 8,000 residents has 29 confirmed cases, according to state figures released Monday.
But 37 cases are connected to the Life Care Center of Burlington, according to the Coffey County Health Department. Both residents and employees are among that total, and some of the employees who have tested positive live in another county, where their cases are counted.
One resident died earlier this month.
An official with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment confirmed Monday that the outbreak at the Burlington facility is the largest in the state.
“It shouldn’t be surprising to us that we are seeing more cases,” said Lindsay Payer, administrator of the Coffey County Health Department. “Due to the ongoing investigation process, we are now receiving results from some who were presumed positive and were tested to confirm.”
Of the 37 cases connected to the Life Care facility in Burlington, 19 are residents.
All but two of the Coffey County cases have come from the Life Care Center, Payer said. Of those two unrelated to the facility, one is travel related and the other is still under investigation.
Payer’s department is in daily communication with the nursing facility, from calls and emails to video webinars, she said. Officials with the KDHE are also in regular communication with the department.
Facility staff are checking temperatures of residents twice a day and giving daily respiratory assessments. The temperatures of employees are also checked.
“If anyone gets a fever, they are tested that day with results the next,” Payer said. “We try to be very quick with that. ... We are taking every step possible to identify it as soon as there is an inkling of it there.”
Kansas now has 11 coronavirus clusters across six counties, state officials said Monday. Three of the clusters are tied to church gatherings, said Lee Norman, Secretary of the KDHE.
The other eight clusters consist mostly of skilled nursing facilities, Norman said, adding that he believes there have been six outbreaks in nursing homes.
The cases in Burlington are at least the fourth outbreak at a U.S. facility owned by Life Care Centers of America, whose nursing home in Kirkland, Washington, has been linked to 37 deaths. An email to the company’s headquarters in Tennessee was not immediately returned on Monday.
Last month, six coronavirus cases were identified at Life Care Center of St. Louis. And Kansas’ first death — a man in his 70s from Wyandotte County — was a resident of Life Care Center of Kansas City.
That man tested positive for the virus after his March 11 death. No one else at the KCK facility has tested positive for the virus.
In Burlington, Payer said “one thing working against us here” is that the facility had five residents experience fevers on the weekend of March 20.
“The first respiratory symptoms took four to five days to show up,” Payer said. “So for four or five days we thought we were dealing with (just) a fever. “
At that time, those residents were immediately isolated and Payer’s office told KDHE that “we have an outbreak of something, but we don’t know what.”
Once the respiratory symptoms began, so did the testing.
Payer said Monday that she and her staff are “bracing for more cases to come from this site.”
Many sick residents have been able to stay at the facility as they recover from the virus. Employees are recovering at home.
On the Coffey County Health Department’s Facebook page Monday afternoon, staff posted a hopeful message about two employees at Life Care.
“Today we are celebrating two county residents who have recovered from COVID-19 and are officially out of isolation.”
More than 50 followers had posted by 4 p.m.
“We don’t hear much in the surrounding areas about the recovered,” one woman wrote. “Thank you for keeping the positive and celebrating!!”
Jonathan Shorman, The Star’s Topeka correspondent, contributed to this report.
This story was originally published April 6, 2020 at 6:29 PM.
