CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Seven patients at a Charleston nursing home who have tested positive for the coronavirus will be treated for at least 14 days in a separate unit at the facility.
All tests were returned early Thursday morning on the patients at Eastbrook Center, a nursing home owned by Stonerise Healthcare. There are a total of seven patients with the virus. Tests on 118 other patients came back negative. One staff member has also tested postive and is recovering at home.
Stonerise CEO Larry Pack said four of the seven are hospitalized at CAMC. He said one is in stable condition while the others are asymptomatic with three of them hospitalized and three others being cared for at Eastbrook. Pack said the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department has asked them to care for the seven in a separate unit at Eastbrook.
“We’re going to take our patients back from CAMC in the next couple of days and put them in a separate unit and be able to take care of them. We’re working very hard, very diligently to get that done,” Pack said.
He said CDC guidelines will be followed and the patients will be isolated for at least 14 days. Pack said Eastbrook Health Director Dr. Greg Jarrell will direct the care for the patients.
Stonerise put visitor limitations in place at all 17 homes it owns in West Virginia in mid-March. Pack said they still don’t know how the virus came into Eastbrook. He said the first patient did have symptoms.
“They had some symptoms and we sent them out to the hospital and because of the symptoms the hospital decided to do a test,” Pack said. “If that had not have happened we may have had it in our center and not known it.”
Pack said no one else was really showing symptoms.
“it’s not like the flu. You kind of know when you have the flu and when you’re a carrier of the flu because you’ve got the symptoms–but you can be a carrier (of the coronavirus) without symptoms but you can also have the virus and not have any symptoms,” Pack said. “That’s a really unusual virus for us all to deal with.”
Pack said nursing homes across the state also face the difficulty that many others face in the area of limited testing. They are still awaiting final test results involving staff
Pack said the employees at Eastbrook have done a tremendous job in the face of the crisis.
“They are absolute heroes,” he said.