After the coronavirus shut down dining rooms at nursing homes, a maintenance worker at Symphony of Joliet took it upon himself to order, assemble and install personal dining tables in more than 40 rooms.
Tragically, though the worker had no symptoms, it was discovered later that he was carrying the COVID-19 virus. By visiting those rooms and through his physical exertion, officials at the nursing home believe, he became a “super spreader” and infected many of the residents.
As soon as administrators learned the worker had the virus, they relocated the exposed patients and other workers to another floor. Regardless, 24 residents and two workers — one of them the maintenance worker — died of the disease.
That account came in a letter from Symphony Care Network CEO David Hartman to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and was verified by Dr. Alexander Stemer, who oversees the nursing home chain’s response to the pandemic.
Once initial testing confirmed infections at the home, the officials said, state health officials advised to stop testing and to treat everyone who had symptoms as if they had the virus. That approach, though, ignored all the people who may have had the virus but showed no symptoms, like the maintenance worker.
Testing of all residents and workers could have revealed who had the virus so they could have been separated and saved lives, Stemer said.
Now, anyone who enters the Joliet facility for the first time must be tested, Stemer said. But a nationwide shortage of tests has left most nursing homes without the capacity to test everyone, he said, leaving many residents and workers vulnerable.
“Our entire nation is woefully short of testing materials,” Stemer said. “We need to test our staff all at once, every patient and every new patient. To conquer this, we’re going to need to do that.”
That call for comprehensive testing was echoed by Mark Parkinson, president and CEO of the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living, which represents more than 14,000 nursing homes.
“We feel like we’ve been ignored,” he said. “Certainly now that the emphasis has gone away from hospitals to where the real battle is taking place in nursing homes, we should be at a priority level one.”
Meanwhile, Symphony of Joliet reported that it is taking “massive” precautions, taking the temperatures of staff and residents twice a day, disinfecting high-touch surfaces 12 times a day, and mandating personal protective equipment like masks and gloves.
Symphony operates 28 nursing homes in four states, according to its website.
To improve transparency, in addition to one-to-one communication, Symphony officials say they will soon roll out video, email and website briefings for patients and families.
Officials also called for the Illinois National Guard to help nursing homes administer tests, as it is doing at a drive-thru center in Aurora.
Nearly one-quarter of all coronavirus deaths in Illinois have occurred at nursing homes, in part because many residents are elderly and have medical conditions that make them vulnerable, such as heart or lung problems or diabetes.
On Monday, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker called for testing of all residents and staff at nursing homes that have yet to report a single case. The goal, he said, is “to identify early the presence of COVID-19 in a facility and isolate those cases before widespread transmission.”
This week, the Illinois Department of Public Health announced it expected to deliver testing material to at least a dozen homes.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
