A Greenwood nursing home that had been experiencing one of the worst outbreaks of COVID-19 in Mississippi has achieved a clean slate.
Crystal Rehabilitation and Health Care Center does not appear on the latest list of long-term care facilities with active outbreaks. The list was released Friday evening by the Mississippi State Department of Health.
For two months, the 110-bed nursing home had been struggling with an outbreak that infected at least 75 residents and claimed the lives of 17. At some point, at least 28 of its employees had also tested positive for the illness.
On Monday, Joe Gimenez, a spokesman for the nursing home’s parent company, Nexion Health, said the number of infected residents was down to 16. By Thursday, the nursing home reported to the Department of Health, those 16 had recovered as well.
“We could not be more proud of the team at Crystal,” Gimenez said Friday. “The circumstances created fear and uncertainty, but our staff showed up and fought the virus day in and day out. We are seeing the results, but there may be more battles ahead.”
Nursing homes and other long-term care facilities are particularly vulnerable to the respiratory disease, since their residents are older or in poor health. Residents of these facilities account for about half of Mississippi’s COVID-19 deaths.
As of Thursday, there were 71 long-term facilities, including 51 nursing homes, with active outbreaks. That’s a decline from 83 infected facilities the week before.
Golden Age nursing home remains on the list, although its infections have slowed in recent days.
It has experienced one more death, bringing its total to 14. In addition, 88 residents and 36 staff members have tested positive at some point for the new coronavirus. It was not immediately known how many have since recovered.
Greenwood’s only other nursing home, Riverview Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, has had two residents test positive for COVID-19 during the current outbreak, but none have died.
The data coming from the Department of Health has been limited since Wednesday because of problems with its software. On Friday, it reported that 381 new cases and five deaths were added on Wednesday, but it did not break down in which counties those cases and deaths occurred.
“We appreciate the importance of extensive data and hope to rectify the situation as quickly as possible while working to attain a more sustainable solution,” Dr. Thomas Dobbs, the state health officer, said in a prepared statement.
Through Wednesday, Mississippi has recorded about 21,000 cases of COVID-19 and 943 deaths.
• Contact Tim Kalich at 581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
