Louisiana has high nursing home rate
Published 6:00 pm Tuesday, March 24, 2020
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Louisiana is among the top three states for nursing homes reporting confirmed or suspected coronavirus cases. A news report in The Advocate said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) named Louisiana, Georgia and New York as the three states based on data from the Centers for Disease Control.
Those states are in FEMA’s top tier category, which means they had between 7 and 25 nursing homes with patients who either tested positive or were exhibiting signs of the deadly virus. Dr. Alex Billioux, assistant secretary for the Office of Public Health of the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH), said the state has gotten information about positive tests from nursing home residents at the time they were diagnosed.
The newspaper said Billioux declined to say how many or which facilities were affected, but didn’t challenge the findings in the FEMA report. Lambeth House in New Orleans and St. James Place in Baton Rouge are the only known cases affecting nursing homes.
Lambeth House is a retirement community in Uptown New Orleans. It has been hit particularly hard and has Louisiana’s only known cluster of COVID-19 cases so far. Seven residents there had died as of Sunday in a facility housing about 260 residents, which accounts for 30 percent of the state’s total coronavirus-related mortality rate of 20 people. Lambeth House had 24 confirmed coronavirus cases as of Sunday.
The Advocate said as of Saturday, all of those who died at Lambeth House from coronavirus were men at least 80 years old, an age group that has shown particularly high death rates among coronavirus infections worldwide. Most of them lived in an independent-living section.
Billioux said when a confirmed case is identified as having been in a nursing home, his office has a special team working with that nursing home.
There are 24 states that didn’t have any nursing home facilities with suspected or confirmed cases; 20 had between one and three nursing homes where a person was at least thought to be infected, and three had between four and six facilities with such a case, the FEMA report said.
Louisiana is also among 14 states to show at least one assisted-living facility reporting positive coronavirus results.
The coronavirus news continues to be grim, and makes it easier to understand Gov. John Bel Edwards’ Sunday state-at-home order. Like the governor, we urge Louisiana residents not to visit loved ones in hospitals, nursing homes or other residential facilities unless absolutely necessary.
