REGIONAL- Two staff members at Boundary Waters Care Center in Ely recently tested positive for COVID-19, the second long-term care facility in Ely and the tenth in the county to report contact with the coronavirus in the past four weeks.
“Despite our extensive infection prevention efforts, we are saddened to share that two staff members have been diagnosed with COVID-19,” BWCC Executive Director Adam Masloski said in a statement provided to the Timberjay.
Masloski said the center is working with its medical director, providers, the Minnesota Department of Health and St. Louis County Public Health to address the situation. Masloski noted the recent increase in positive COVID-19 cases in the county as he described BWCC’s response.
“Our team is committed to doing everything we can to stop the spread of this virus in our care community, especially given the rise in cases in the county,” Masloski said. “We continue to follow all infection prevention protocols, including using appropriate personal protective equipment, actively screening and monitoring residents, staff and visitors for COVID-19 symptoms, assuring safe congregate dining and group activities, and taking enhanced environmental safety precautions. We are in contact with residents, families, and staff regarding any new or suspected COVID-19 cases through phone, voice message services, emails and letters.”
BWCC and Guardian Angels Health and Rehabilitation Center in Hibbing are the latest regional facilities to be added to a growing list of long-term care facilities with active COVID-19 cases. Ely Carefree Living, The Waterview Woods in Eveleth, The Waterview Pines in Virginia, and Heritage Manor in Chisholm also are among the 283 facilities statewide reporting positive cases in the past four weeks.
“Older adults and those with chronic conditions, as well as the staff who care for them, are the most vulnerable to the virus,” Masloski said. “Many health care facilities are experiencing a rise in cases due to increased test availability and frequency. Regular, ongoing testing enables the identification of asymptomatic, positive cases. Our team is committed to providing every resource available to individuals who test positive.”
Masloski said he was gratified by how everyone associated with BWCC has responded to the COVID threat.
“We are forever grateful to our compassionate staff and the steadfast support and understanding of our residents and families,” he said. “We have all come together to fight this virus.
Masloski said health and employment confidentiality policies prevent BWCC from releasing additional information about individual cases.
The BWCC cases are likely to add to the cumulative total of positive COVID-19 cases in Ely, which stood at 34 as of last Thursday. A free one-day, drive-through testing event has been scheduled for the community next Tuesday.
County public health director Amy Westbrook said on Monday that the county’s overall increase in COVID-19 has been driven by college-age people, many associated with UM-Duluth. But she noted that younger people are frequently employed by long-term care facilities, echoing recent remarks by state Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm that they could be contributing to the increase in cases in such facilities. The number of cases in the county associated with community spread, both identified and unidentified, has climbed to nearly 50 percent, Westbrook said.
“Because we’re seeing so much community spread, there’s just more opportunity now for those populations to sort of intersect and have both community transmission and long-term care setting outbreaks,” Westbrook said. “As we see increases in especially the 20 to 24-year-olds, that population works in long term care facilities, they do work at restaurants, they do work in locations where vulnerable populations live or visit. If we have a lot of community transmission, unfortunately, you eventually see your hospitalizations and deaths begin to creep up. We have seen 12 deaths in St. Louis County over the last week and a half.”
The Timberjay has previously confirmed through online obituaries that five recent deaths at Ely Carefree Living were associated with COVID-19. The newspaper did not identify any deaths in the past week that were linked to the virus.
School decisions
Hibbing schools joined Ely public schools this past week in switching from a full in-person learning model to a hybrid learning mode with limited attendance and increased distance learning for junior high and high school students.
However, St. Louis County district schools, including North Woods and Northeast Range, are still using the in-person model, even though the bi-weekly COVID case rates for greater St. Louis County have hovered above the hybrid benchmark for three consecutive weeks.
Aubrie Hoover, a county health department specialist who works with schools in the northern part of the county on COVID-19, explained that the benchmark isn’t an absolute trigger for shifting education models, but instead serves to heighten scrutiny at individual schools as to what model is appropriate in light of other community data.
“For the past several weeks, we have been at our first threshold, about 10, where the first change we would explore is putting secondary students into a hybrid setting while leaving our elementary all in person,” Hoover said. “So we have worked with each of the individual school districts to kind of go through those numbers a little bit further and provide localized data about what’s going on within their community and within surrounding communities where they might draw students in from.”
Unlike Duluth, cases in long-term care facilities have been contributing to elevated case rates in the rest of the county, which has different implications for different schools, Hoover said.
“Hibbing has a lot of their high school students working in long term care facilities as CNAs or in their food service department,” she said. “If there’s increased case numbers taking place in those facilities, there’s a higher risk that these students then may bring it back into the schools. A decision that Ely makes may look different than some of the county schools in that area. They may find that a lot of their families aren’t directly impacted by a long-term care facility.”
A critical part of the assessment process is looking at trends in the community, rather than single data points, Hoover said.
“The idea behind that is because they don’t want the schools watching those numbers and one week hopping into hybrid, and then they come back down so they go back to in person, and then they jump back up and they go back into hybrid,” Hoover said. “That is really to offer stability for students, for staff and for parents, especially for a lot of parents who may have to find childcare and have to be working with their employers.”
One challenge districts have encountered is when a student or someone in their household has COVID-19 test results that are pending, Hoover said. While one family member may have been tested and is awaiting results, others in the family could be asymptomatic and unknowingly transmit the virus if they come to school.
“We’re asking families that everyone in that household remains home until the results come back in,” Hoover said.
Hoover said that she has been working to reinforce all of the health-related components of safe learning plans adopted by each district, and that a regional response team that includes specialists from the state departments of health and education is activated to assist schools when a positive COVID-19 case is identified.