COVID-19 outbreak at nursing home

Oct. 17--Daily Journal file photo

Richmond County reported 32 new COVID-19 cases and reached 25 deaths related to the virus this week.

ROCKINGHAM -- Richmond County had its second-highest single-day count of new COVID-19 cases with 32 reported Friday, in part due to an outbreak at a local nursing home and increasing cases at Morrison Correctional, all coming in a week in which two more residents died of the virus.

The Hoffman ZIP Code, which includes Morrison, saw an increase of seven new cases Friday, of which Health Director Tommy Jarrell said "a lot" are from the prison. Morrison has had a total of 54 positive cases and has 12 active cases. The highest single-day count came on Sept 21 with 36, 19 of which were at Morrison. At that point, Morrison had 29 total cases with 25 active cases.

Hermitage Retirement Center is experiencing an outbreak, Jarrell confirmed, with now 14 total cases. It's unclear how many of those are active. There have been no deaths reported as of Friday.

Jarrell made clear that this large jump seen Friday wasn't all due to the nursing home and prison, because there's "a lot of community outbreak now," meaning that the virus is spreading and health officials haven't been able to determine how each case was exposed. Richmond County reported its 25th COVID-19-related death Thursday, following the 24th reported on Monday.

"It's gotten so widespread its almost impossible to trace it back to where they got it from," Jarrell said Friday. "It's becoming very challenging. The take-home message is for everyone to really practice preventative measures, keep social distancing ... not only to protect ourselves but to protect other people because you may not know that you've been exposed.

"I truly believe we've transitioned into that second wave," he added, referring to the late rise in COVID-19 cases that experts anticipated early on in the pandemic.

PruittHealth-Rockingham has had three total cases, but Jarrell said that this isn't considered an outbreak, likely due to the time between each positive test. He explained that long-term care facilities test all their residents every month, but increase the rate of testing depending on how many positives there are.

Luckily, Jarrell said the county will soon get some help on the testing front. Though there isn't an official start date, within the next days or weeks there will be free tests available that don't require members of the public to get a doctor's referral, don't require them to have shown symptoms, and don't require them to have been exposed to the virus, according to Jarrell.

"That could help bring (the number of new cases) down because as people know they've been exposed you can certainly isolate yourself," Jarrell said.

Reach Gavin Stone at 910-817-2673 or [email protected]

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