KIRKLAND, Wash. — In the days before the Life Care Center nursing home became ground zero for coronavirus deaths in the U.S., there were few signs it was girding against an illness spreading rapidly around the world.
Visitors came in as they always did, sometimes without signing in. Staffers had only recently begun wearing face masks, but the frail residents and those who came to see them were not asked to do so. And organized events went on as planned, including a purple- and gold-festooned Mardi Gras party last week, where dozens of residents and visitors packed into a common room, passed plates of sausage, rice and king cake, and sang as a Dixieland band played “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
“We were all eating, drinking, singing and clapping to the music,” said Pat McCauley, who was there visiting a friend. “In hindsight, it was a real germ-fest.”
That was just three days before last Saturday’s announcement that a Life Care health care worker in her 40s and a resident in her 70s had been diagnosed with the new virus. The news would be followed over the next few days by the first resident deaths: two men in their 70s, a woman in her 70s and a woman in her 80s.
Of the 14 deaths across the nation as of Friday, at least 10 have been linked to the Seattle-area nursing home, along with dozens of other infections among residents, staff and family members.
A man in his 60s who died Thursday had been a visitor to the nursing home in Kirkland, public health officials announced late Friday.
As disease detectives try to solve the mystery of how exactly the coronavirus got inside Life Care, they also are questioning whether the 190-bed home that had been fined before over its handling of infections was as vigilant as it could have been in protecting its vulnerable patients against an outbreak that had already killed thousands in China and around the world.
A team of federal and state regulators planned to visit Life Care today, a move that could lead to sanctions.
In an outbreak like this, “it’s not business as usual, so business as usual is not going to be OK,” said Dr. Mark Dworkin, an epidemiologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. “There needs to be some sort of mobilization within the facility for enhanced adherence to procedures. Infection control and visitors logging in. These things need to be translated out across the country.”
In the week since the outbreak began, the center has issued statements saying it grieves with the families who have lost loved ones. It also has noted that visits have been halted, staffers are being screened and residents with any kind of respiratory illness have been placed in isolation.
Several family members told the AP that they didn’t notice any unusual precautions.
Pat and Bob McCauley, who visited a friend eight times in two weeks before the outbreak, said they noticed some staff members wearing face masks during a visit on Feb. 26 that included the Mardi Gras party but didn’t think much of it. They went to a common room with a half-dozen tables and began singing along with their friend as residents in wheelchairs bunched together to get clear view of the banjo, bass and washboard players.
“As it became more crowded, we helped move patients into seats, move wheelchairs into places between tables, holding doors, adjusting tables and chairs to accommodate wheelchairs,” Pat McCauley said. “We had very close contact with numerous patients.”
Two days later, when the couple arrived for another visit, they realized the reason for the masks. A staff member told them at the door that they would have to wear ones themselves because a “respiratory virus” had spread.
They turned around and went home.
Lori Spencer, whose 81-year-old mother is at Life Care, said she also noticed the masks on a visit that same Wednesday and how packed the place was.
