After a Covid-19 outbreak exploded at Elderwood in November, rising cases and deaths have continued to plague the elder care home in Burlington’s New North End.
As of Wednesday, 119 people there had tested positive for the virus — a 41-case increase over the past two weeks, according to the Department of Health, making it the largest outbreak in a Vermont elder-care home since the pandemic began. Seventy-nine of the home’s 107 residents have tested positive, along with 40 staff members.
One employee, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said seven people in her unit alone had died.
“It is sad to go into work and see so many empty beds,” the employee said. One elderly man, her “favorite resident ever,” died last week just before she arrived at work. She didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.
Twelve residents have died at Elderwood, according to the health department.
Even compared with other nursing homes that have battled outbreaks during Vermont’s second wave of the virus, Elderwood’s cases have risen alarmingly fast.
The outbreak is an example of the vulnerability of long-term care populations as community transmission has grown in Vermont, according to Kayla Donohue, a leader of the Department of Health team that responds to outbreaks at elder care facilities.
“Certainly, as we’ve seen higher spread in the community, we’ve seen greater risk to long-term care facilities as well,” Donohue said.
On Wednesday officials said there are signs that the worst of the outbreak’s effects on Elderwood have passed. The home’s latest round of staff and resident testing yielded no new positives, Donohue said. Staff members say more residents who have been sick are recovering from the virus.
“I don’t think we’re out of the woods quite yet,” Donohue said, “But it’s always a good sign when we start to see the number of new positives identified decrease.”
Staff and families navigate effects
There has been little respite for Elderwood’s staff since the outbreak began.
When employees walk into work, they’re hit by what she and staff members refer to as the “Covid smell,” according to the anonymous worker. She described it as “a mix of dead tissue, skin, urine, feces and that strep throat smell.”
“There’s a funk in the air,” she said. “It permeates your mask, it permeates your clothes.”
The facility has maintained a rigorous testing plan as recommended by the health department for long-term care facilities with outbreaks, Donohue said. PCR tests are administered to residents every three days with antigen tests on days in between. Elderwood is “fully stocked with all appropriate personal protective equipment,” said spokesperson Chuck Hayes.
One Elderwood resident who contracted the virus, 71-year-old Michael Cassidy of Belvidere, shared an update on his Covid battle to his Facebook page on Nov. 30. “Have been infected with the virus,” he wrote in a post. “Not sure who else has it but I cough and I sleep about 20 hours a day.”
He died six days later.
Cassidy’s daughter, Kelly Cassidy, said just a week passed between her father’s Covid diagnosis and his death. She wished Elderwood’s staff had updated her more regularly on Michael’s condition during that time.
“Unless I checked in with him directly, I wasn’t always sure how he was,” she said in a message to VTDigger. “He also just told me he was fine a lot, which clearly he wasn’t.”
Elderwood tries to communicate regularly with families of residents through a robocall system, Hayes said. Personal phone calls to families about news that falls short of a positive Covid-19 test or a resident death is time-consuming for staff members who are already spread thin, he said.
Kelly Cassidy said she was grateful when Elderwood gave her the opportunity to see her father as he was dying and offered to provide her PPE to make the visit safe. (She turned down the offer over worries that she might catch the virus.)
She wonders how the outbreak exploded so quickly.
“I’d like to think that they were doing the best that they could under the circumstances, as I’m sure they were, and are short of staff and had a lot of people infected,” she said. “But you still have to wonder how it got so bad so fast.”
Vaccine offers glimmer of hope
Outbreaks in long-term care homes have been frequent as Vermont battles a second wave of the virus.
The Department of Health reported two new nursing home cases on Tuesday, one at Converse Home in Burlington and another at Our Lady of Providence in Winooski. Previously reported outbreaks have grown. St. Albans Health & Rehab logged 27 new positives last week, and now has a total of 63 cases.
A nursing home across the street from Elderwood, Birchwood Terrace Rehab and Healthcare, was the source of Vermont’s deadliest long-term care outbreak in the spring, recording 21 deaths.
The arrival of the Covid-19 vaccine in Vermont offers a glimmer of hope to homes battling outbreaks. Pharmacies around the state will receive 1,950 doses of the drug to administer to long-term care patients by Dec. 21, with front-line healthcare workers set to be vaccinated in the same timeframe.
Elderwood residents have begun to receive dates for vaccination appointments, Donohue said.
Asked Tuesday if he would be vaccinated publicly to demonstrate the safety of the treatment as some political figures have, Gov. Phil Scott said he doesn’t want to deprive Vermont’s long-term care residents of vaccine doses.
“I struggle a bit because I would not want to take one dose away from someone in one of those priority groups,” Scott said. “Those in long-term care facilities should come first, and the staff along with them.”
The anonymous Elderwood employee said people working and living in the home are starting to see some hope, too.
“We don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I think the tunnel is getting wider,” she said.
Last Saturday a group of people showed up in blowup animal costumes to entertain the residents from the lawn outside Elderwood. A costumed chicken ran in front of one window, then a hippo, the staffer said. They blasted music from a boombox, and danced and danced on the grass.
“That really boosted some of the residents right up,” said the anonymous staffer.
