UPDATED April 20, 2020 – MANATEE COUNTY – Manatee County officials are concerned about the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) among residents and staff members at long-term care facilities, including nursing homes, rehabilitation centers and assisted living facilities.
Manatee County Public Safety Director Jake Saur addressed these concerns during Friday’s emergency county commission meeting.
“Our number one testing concern right now is with our nursing homes. The state has brought in incident management teams to our nursing homes and they’ve started a very big push to get all of those patients and workers tested,” he said.
“As of this week, our health department has started issuing involuntary quarantines to some of those nursing home workers because we know they’re spreading COVID-19. The state is reserving those tests for the nursing homes. We have to get into those nursing homes to make sure they’re following all the proper procedures and that they’re also being tested,” Saur said.
“Our nursing homes and so forth are taking a hit right now. I’m curious why we’re just hearing this today and why we weren’t on this sooner,” Commissioner Vanessa Baugh said.
“These folks are not going out. It’s coming in from the community. We have people that are dying in nursing homes. We’ve got to get a handle on this,” Commission Chair Betsy Benac said.
“There’s three or four assisted living facilities that we have as hot spots right now,” Commissioner Carol Whitmore added.
FDOH data reports
On Tuesday, April 7, the twice-daily Florida Department of Health (FDOH) Joint Information Center Data Reports included for the first time a list of counties reporting COVID-19 cases involving long-term care facility residents and/or staff members.
The April 7 FDOH/Joint Information Center morning data report listed 23 long-term care facility COVID-19 cases in Manatee County. Those reports did not yet include long-term care facility deaths.
The April 15 evening FDOH data report was the first to also include long-term care facility resident and staff member deaths, and that report cited 45 positive cases and eight deaths associated with long-term care facilities in Manatee County.
Governor orders facilities named
Gov. Ron DeSantis addressed nursing home concerns at his Saturday press conference.
DeSantis said members of the Florida National Guard are now going into nursing homes and doing spot testing to try to identify asymptomatic staff members who may be infected with COVID-19.
“We are telling the Guard to expand the strike teams into the assisted living facilities,” DeSantis said.
“Since the beginning of this crisis, probably our number one point of emphasis has been on long-term care and nursing home facilities. Very early on we put strong guidance and regulations in place so that staff members – anyone who entered a facility – had to be screened for coronavirus symptoms. We also prohibited outside visitors,” DeSantis said.
“What we found is you may have everyone doing everything right in one of these facilities, but you could have a staff member who’s not symptomatic and it can spread throughout the staff and spread to the residents very quickly,” DeSantis said.
“I told the Surgeon General from the beginning that we want to put as much information out as you can. I don’t think you should be identifying individual patients by name. I have now directed him that it is necessary to release the names of the facilities where a resident or staff member has tested positive for COVID-19,” DeSantis said.
Local facilities identified
Saturday evening’s FDOH data report email included for the first time a link to an untitled four-page report that listed county-by-county every long-term care facility in Florida that reported positive COVID-19 cases or deaths. That list only includes the names of the facilities and the counties they are located in. It does not provide the number of cases or deaths at a specific facility.
The following Manatee County facilities were included in Saturday’s list:
- Braden River Rehabilitation Center, 2010 Manatee Ave. E. in Bradenton;
- Bradenton Health Care, 6305 Cortez Road W. in Bradenton;
- Brookdale Bradenton Gardens, 5612 26th St. W. in Bradenton;
- Casa Mora Rehabilitation and Extended Care, 1902 59th W. in Bradenton;
- Manatee Springs Rehabilitation and Nursing Center, 5627 Ninth St. E. in Bradenton;
- Residence at Bay Vue, 105 15th St. E. in Bradenton;
- Riviera Palms Rehabilitation Center, 926 Haben Blvd. in Palmetto;
- Westminster Point Pleasant, 1700 Third Ave. W. in Bradenton.
Saturday evening’s FDOH data report listed 68 positive long-term care facility resident or staff COVID-19 cases and 13 deaths in Manatee County. Sunday evening’s FDOH data report listed 120 long-term care facility cases and the same 13 deaths.
Sun Facebook fan Brenda Smonskey saw the list on The Sun’s website and discovered that her employer, Beneva Lakes Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center in Sarasota, is on the list of long-term care facilities reporting COVID-19 cases.
“Thank you,” she posted on The Sun’s Facebook page. “I work prn at Beneva Lakes and was not informed.”
According to the list, long-term care facilities accounted for nearly 29% of the county’s 415 reported COVID-19 cases and nearly 42% of the county’s 31 reported COVID-19 deaths.
As of Sunday evening, Manatee County had the fourth-highest number of long-term care facility cases and deaths in Florida, trailing only Miami-Dade County, Broward County and Palm Beach County.
Sunday evening’s data report email referenced the statewide numbers and said, “There are currently 307 long-term care facilities with positive cases of COVID-19. Of the 1,825 cases of residents or staff in long-term care facilities, 179 have died.”
No additional facilities in Manatee County were named in Sunday evening’s facilities’ list.
Braden River
On April 17, the Lakeland-based newspaper The Ledger reported it obtained a document from the Florida Medical Examiners Commission that contained information on 59 confirmed COVID-19 deaths at nursing homes, rehabilitation centers and assisted living facilities in Florida.
According to The Ledger and its reference to the April 14 Florida Medical Examiners Commission report, four of the seven long-term care facility deaths in Manatee County reported at that time were connected to the Braden River Rehabilitation Center.
On Saturday, The Sun requested from the Florida Medical Examiners Commission the document referenced by The Ledger.
The Sun received the following response from spokesperson Gretl Plessinger: “We haven’t released information from the Medical Examiners Commission on COVID-19. We are compiling the information received by the commission.”
Plessinger said she would provide that information when it becomes available.
