Four more deaths reported at Riverbend as report shows how COVID-19 may have spread
Note: This story has been updated with a correction to the Unified Government’s timeline that the health department issued Friday morning.
Four more residents of the Riverbend rehabilitation and nursing home in Kansas City, Kansas, have died of the coronavirus, increasing the number of deaths at the facility to 19.
Wyandotte County’s chief medical officer included those numbers in a report released Thursday. The number of confirmed cases linked to Riverbend Post Acute Rehablitation have stayed at 116, Dr. Allen Greiner said. Ten people are hospitalized.
“I am saddened to see so many people impacted by COVID-19, and to have lost more of our community members to this disease,” Greiner wrote in the report. “...Ever since we were first notified of confirmed cases at Riverbend, our staff have been in constant communication with Riverbend leadership to investigate and provide guidance.”
To better illustrate what occurred at Riverbend and be transparent about what is being done, Greiner said he included in the report a timeline of activity at the facility. He also included the communication that Riverbend leadership has had with the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas.
One key element of the time frame is March 24-27, when a Riverbend employee began having symptoms associated with the virus.
Between March 27 and 28, the “Riverbend staff member reported to work with cough and fever we believe was from COVID-19,” Greiner’s report said.
The employee reportedly admitted to working “without appropriate PPE.”
The employee was tested at an emergency room on March 29. The next day, the results came back showing the person was positive for the virus and the public health department was notified. At that time the department did not know he was affiliated with Riverbend, however.
“Staff began trying to contact the patient, but were unable to reach this individual,” the report said. The health department “did not have information on where the patient worked at this time.”
It is not clear from the report when Riverbend learned about the employee’s test.
On April 2, the health department had heard that patients with the virus had been sent from Riverbend to a local hospital. Staff at the department reached out to Riverbend and were told that one employee and one resident had tested positive for the virus.
“And they reported having one employee and one resident positive, and that they were testing 20 residents,” the report said.
(On Friday, health department officials updated the report and said that the leadership at Riverbend had contacted the department — not the other way around — and that it was a day earlier, on April 1, than the initial information said. On April 1, the report now says, Riverbend leadership told health officials that there were two positive tests and 20 people were being tested.)
According to the report, as of April 13, the health department believes that many residents may have been exposed to the virus while that employee was at the facility.
“However, investigation is still under way to determine if this was the initial exposure,” the report said, or if there “may have been prior exposure to the virus at the facility.”
Unified Government health officials have said the majority of the residents at Riverbend have now tested positive for the coronavirus. The facility had roughly 130 residents and nearly 100 employees.
This story was originally published April 16, 2020 at 5:50 PM.
