An assisted living facility in Greenwood has quarantined all of its residents in their rooms after an employee tested positive this week for COVID-19.
“We’re doing everything we can. We’re lucky to have kept it out to this point,” said Sharon Harvey, the manager of Indywood Glen Personal Care Home.
Harvey said the employee was tested for the virus last week, and the result came back positive on Monday. The employee is quarantining at home.
The Mississippi Department of Health is scheduled to be at Indywood Glen Friday to test all 58 of its residents as well as the employees.
None of the residents or employees are showing symptoms of the respiratory disease, Harvey said.
In the meantime, she said, Indywood Glen will continue with the preventative steps it has employed for the past four months, which include screening employees for the virus when they report to work, regularly sanitizing the facility and heavily restricting visitation. Visitors are not permitted in the facility, but families have been allowed to talk from their cars in the parking lot to residents on the front porch.
“That’s the only kind of visitation we’ve had since March,” Harvey said.
For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough, that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death.
Residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities are particularly susceptible to bad outcomes from the virus. They account for 41, or 73%, of Leflore County’s 56 deaths from COVID-19.
The Department of Health considers a facility to be having an active outbreak when at least one resident or employee tests positive. Indywood Glen joins two Greenwood nursing homes — Golden Age and Riverview Nursing & Rehabilitation Center — on the active outbreak list for Leflore County.
Although the county has not officially recorded any deaths related to the virus since July 7, it has experienced a surge in cases this week. For the two-day period ending at 6 p.m. Tuesday, 49 cases were added, an increase of 9%. The county has experienced 588 cases of COVID-19 since the outbreak began.
Harvey said she feels that “it’s just a matter of time” before all long-term facilities have to deal with an outbreak at some point. They are considered highly susceptible to the virus because of the age of their residents and the close quarters in which the residents generally live.
She’s optimistic, though, that the outbreak can be contained at Indywood Glen.
“This, too, shall pass,” she said.
•Contact Tim Kalich at 581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
