ANDERSON — Long before the novel coronavirus became prevalent in Indiana, health officials in Madison County were calling for the testing of all residents and staff of long-term care facilities.
Last week, President Donald Trump said the country should test all residents of nursing homes within two weeks.
Indiana officials have said that’s not feasible.
In Indiana, of 1,596 people who have died from the coronavirus 36%, or 584, were residents of long-term care facilities. Of 27,280 cases in Indiana, 11%, or 3,033, are people in nursing homes.
“Put into perspective, testing every long-term care resident and every employee would be in the state of Indiana around 100,000 people within the next two weeks. So that’s a lot to bite off at one time,” Dr. Kris Box, commissioner of the Indiana State Department of Health, said.
In Madison County, 43 of the reported 61 deaths from COVID-19 have been in long-term care facilities.
Dr. Stephen Wright, county health officer, said county medical officials wanted to test all nursing home residents from the start of the outbreak.
“In an ideal world that’s the way it should be, including the staff,” he said. “The state said it’s not feasible at this time. They should strive for that.
“There are still plenty of nursing home facilities that haven’t been invaded by this virus,” Wright said. “We need to continue our vigilance.”
He said it would absolutely be a good move to test everyone in long-term care.
“Eventually they will be able to test everyone with the new tests that are being developed,” Wright said. “That’s what we wanted from the beginning, that’s how other countries succeeded in containing this virus through a lot of testing.”
Dr. Phillip Goshert, a member of the Madison County Board of Health, agreed that in a perfect world you would test everyone in a long-term care facility.
“For the nursing homes that have already been ravaged, it’s probably too late,” he said of testing residents and staff now. “If we had the ability we should have done the testing at the start.”
Dr. Troy Abbott, president of the local health board, said county officials did call for testing in March.
“We did a little study in Summitville where we tested everyone,” Abbott said of Summit Health & Living. “We tested all the residents and staff that wanted to be.”
They showed the data to the Indiana State Department of Health, which refused to accept that data, he said.
“All but one person was showing immunity,” Abbott said. “State would only accept negative nasal swab tests, which has a 30% error rate.”
The goal was to allow the residents to end the isolation of having to remain in their rooms.
“We need to have some guidance from the state,” Abbott said. “We need to be proactive, instead of reactive.
“Right now we’re running around and testing people to see if they have it,” he continued. “We’re not trying to find out what we can learn from the testing and show some immunity to it.”
The American Association of Retired People reported last week that more than 16,000 nursing home residents have died from the virus.
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