Two women who died in Florida Keys nursing home test negative for COVID-19
Two women who died at a Florida Keys nursing home where an employee tested positive for the novel coronavirus last week received negative results for the disease Wednesday, according to the Florida Department of Health.
Nevertheless, the state is still waiting on results from 150 employees at the facility who were tested by a multi-agency emergency response team over the weekend, said Bob Eadie, administrator for the Department of Health in Monroe County.
Late last week, a speech pathologist at the Crystal Health and Rehab Center on Plantation Key received a positive COVID-19 result, and health officials worried because that coincided with the deaths of the two women, ages 87 and 101.
Eadie said news of the deceased women’s negative results is a small relief because he worried their deaths could be the beginning of a larger outbreak at the facility.
“It’s a lot better than I thought,” Eadie said. “I had a real sinking feeling in my stomach about this one.”
A “strike team” consisting of members of the Florida Department of Health, the Florida National Guard and the Agency for Health Care Administration, the state agency that regulates nursing homes, was dispatched to Crystal Health on Friday and began testing employees and residents on Saturday.
“All of the patients in there are being watched very closely,” Eadie said.
Along with that team, the health department sent a “Rapid Emergency Support Team” that’s charged with training the nursing home’s staff on how to provide clinical care for patients in the 120-bed facility who contract COVID-19, according to an email sent Saturday from the State Emergency Operations Center
According to the latest information from the Health Department, 80 people in the Keys have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Three people have died.
Cases haven’t spiked in the Keys like in other areas in Florida, including next-door neighbor Miami-Dade County, which remains a hotspot for the virus.
Eadie and other county officials credit the relatively low numbers to the checkpoints that were set up in late March on the 18 Mile Stretch of U.S. 1 at the Monroe-Dade line, and on County Road 905. Only Keys residents and those working in the island chain are allowed to get through.
“Can you prove it? No,” Eadie said. “But, hopefully we can convince [the state] to do them until we can start loosening it up.”
The checkpoints are staffed by the county, mostly the sheriff’s office, but they’re operating with permission from the state, which has jurisdiction over U.S. 1.
