Sharon Health Care will be a COVID ‘recovery’ center

SHARON — Sharon Health Care Center will be one of four COVID-19 centers in the state where patients can recover after being released from acute care at a hospital, Gov. Ned Lamont announced on Wednesday night.

There had been discussion of the plan to make Sharon Health Care and other Athena Health Care Systems facilities centers for nursing home residents with a positive diagnosis for the coronavirus. 

State Rep. Maria Horn (D-64) had said last week that Sharon Health Care would not in fact be one of the COVID positive facilities, but she stressed at the time that things were very much up in the air and could change at any time. 

The announcement of the plan, which was made at about 8 p.m. on Wednesday, April 8, says that, “Governor Lamont today announced a partnership with Connecticut’s long-term care facilities to collaborate on a medical surge plan that includes the establishment of COVID-19 recovery centers in nursing homes to accept patients who can be discharged from acute care hospitals, but are still impacted by COVID19 infection. 

“So far, at least four such recovery centers will be opened in Torrington, Bridgeport, Meriden, and Sharon that will make available more than 500 new beds for COVID-19 patients.”

Athena Health Care Systems has “54 nursing homes, assisted livings, home health and hospice agencies in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island,” according to spokesman Tim Brown. 

In Connecticut, the company has 23 nursing homes,including Sharon Health Care Center as well as Evergreen Health Care Center in Stafford Springs, Conn.

Sharon Health Care is in Sharon and across the street from Sharon Hospital but has no affiliation with the hospital.

The first reported positive case of the coronavirus in the six-town coverage area of The Lakeville Journal was a 57-year-old woman in long-term care at the facility. She was well enough that she could remain, in a segregated room, at the health care center and did not have to be hospitalized. As this story was going online, it is believed that woman has now recovered.

The first nursing home resident in the state to test positive for COVID-19 was at Athena’s Evergreen Health Care and the second nursing home patient in the state to die from  COVID-19 was “affiliated with Evergreen,” Brown said.

Those two male patients were in short-term care. Subsequently, a number of people at Evergreen have tested positive.

So far, no positive cases have been reported at Geer Village in North Canaan or Noble Horizons in Salisbury. 

As of Wednesday night, there were 292 positive cases of COVID-19 in Litchfield County and there had been 12 COVID-19-related deaths in the county. As of Tuesday night, there had been nine. The figures from the state are updated every afternoon and can be found online at www.portal.ct.gov/Coronavirus; click on “test data.”

Robert Rubbo, the director of health for the Torrington Area Health District (TAHD), said last Friday that the first three deaths were all in Torrington, and were all elderly. At least one was in a retirement facility, he said in an interview reported in the April  9 issue of The Lakeville Journal. 

On Tuesday, April 7, Rubbo said it was not possible to sort through all the data to figure out exactly where the remaining five deaths (and now nine) had occurred.

Rubbo said that of the five new deaths one had been in the town of Litchfield, and one in Watertown. A majority, he said, were in Torrington and probably 99% of them were already hospitalized. The ages and genders of the fatalities were not available. 

The announcement from Lamont also said that, “The Connecticut Department of Public Health is also working with hospitals to ensure that more patients can be tested while they are hospitalized in order to receive the two negative COVID-19 test results 24 hours apart that are needed in order for a patient to be discharged to a general long-term care facility. There are currently more than 2,000 available beds in long-term care facilities that could be occupied by patients currently hospitalized who could be discharged when they get their negative COVID-19 tests.”

In a statement sent out at 9:45 p.m. on Wednesday night, Rep. Horn said that she is still receiving details on the plan, but “the need to protect nursing home residents in Connecticut from this pandemic is urgent.  [Last week], there were 150 [nursing home] residents who were COVID positive: tonight that number is 660. This need is statewide, regional and local, as Sharon Hospital will also have a need to transfer patients recovering from COVID infection to stepdown facilities such as those described more fully” in the governor’s announcement.

This is a developing story; look for updates as they become available.