Belleville nursing home leader describes managing region’s largest coronavirus outbreak
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Some residents with COVID-19 inside the long-term care center with the largest coronavirus outbreak in southwestern Illinois deteriorated so quickly that they couldn’t say goodbye to their families before they died, the facility’s administrator recalled Tuesday.
At Four Fountains in Belleville, 104 residents and employees have been diagnosed with COVID-19, caused by the coronavirus, and 27 of them died from the disease. The facility has had more diagnoses and deaths of any long-term care center in St. Clair, Madison, Clinton, Monroe, Randolph or Macoupin counties as of June 12, the latest date data was available for the whole region.
During St. Clair County’s daily COVID-19 briefing Tuesday, Four Fountains Administrator Christy Warcup talked about the difficulties of trying to manage an outbreak of the novel virus and care for residents when their decline from COVID-19 can happen fast.
“They were fine one day and the next they weren’t,” Warcup told St. Clair County Chairman Mark Kern in the briefing. “All of a sudden, residents would start spiking a temp. All of a sudden, residents would be not themselves. Their mental status was altered. Their respirations were high.
“We tried to allow as many end-of-life visits as we could, but sometimes we couldn’t get to it in time.”
But the situation at Four Fountains has changed since then, according to Warcup. She said the facility has not had a new diagnosis of COVID-19 since May 20.
“We’re happy now that we can say there’s no one in our building who has active symptoms of COVID...so I’m so thankful for that, but there was a very hard time here when our residents were dying,” Warcup said.
“... We’re kind of starting to breathe a little bit now, but you can’t get complacent, because it can happen again,” she said.
‘It was like a match, and we could not stop it’
Warcup said Four Fountains has followed state and federal guidance since March — first to screen anyone coming into the building for symptoms, then to stop allowing visitors inside and eventually to end residents’ group activities and arrange for them to eat in their rooms.
Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, said in April that employees who might not have known they were infected probably brought the coronavirus into long-term care centers across the state, since there were almost no visitors. Long-term care center screenings would not have caught an infected employee who was not experiencing symptoms.
Four Fountains received its first positive test result on April 3, according to Warcup.
“Once it started, it was like a match, and we could not stop it,” she said Tuesday. “... We felt on April 3 like we failed, you know? We couldn’t stop it. Since then, it’s just been trying to minimize as much as possible, trying to do everything we can to practice our infection control, things we’ve learned for years.”
She said staff members were checking residents’ vitals every four hours. They isolated positive residents to one hallway and added a second hallway as the number of diagnoses grew to 50, Warcup said. The employees who cared for them came into the building through a designated entrance and wore personal protective equipment, according to Warcup.
Warcup has said the 156-bed facility tested every resident and employee for the coronavirus on May 4. This week, she said half of Four Fountains’ 104 diagnoses from that testing were people who had no symptoms.
Latest numbers on long-term care outbreaks
The St. Clair County Health Department provides daily updates on the outbreaks and other developments in the county during 3:30 p.m. live streams by the St. Clair County Emergency Management Agency on Facebook.
Here is the information the health department provided Tuesday on locations in “outbreak status,” with two or more residents or staff who are COVID-19 positive or have COVID-19-like symptoms. The health department does not provide a breakdown of how many residents or employees are affected:
- 156-bed facility Four Fountains in Belleville — 104 people affected, including 27 deaths (No change reported since June 12)
- 116-bed facility Cedar Ridge of Lebanon — 59 people, including seven deaths (One more person than what was reported Monday)
- 53-bed facility New Athens Home for the Aged — 56 people, including seven deaths (One more person than what was reported Monday)
- 90-bed facility Lebanon Care Center — 54 people, including 10 deaths (No change reported since June 1)
- 140-bed facility BRIA of Belleville — 48 people, including six deaths (No change reported since June 12)
- 108-bed facility St. Paul’s Home in Belleville — 45 people, including 14 deaths (No change reported since Saturday)
- 82-bed facility Memorial Care Center in Belleville — 44 people, including five deaths (No change reported since June 8)
- 94-bed facility Swansea Rehab and Care Center — 29 people, including five deaths (No change reported since Monday)
- 133-bed facility BRIA of Cahokia — 23 people, including two deaths (Based on June 12 state data because the facility is outside of the St. Clair County Health Department’s jurisdiction)
- Caritas Family Solutions in Belleville region — 12 people (No change reported since June 5)
- Cedarhurst of Shiloh — 12 people (No change reported since June 5)
- Knollwood Retirement Center in Caseyville — Eight people, including one death (No change reported since May 25)
- Colonnade Senior Living in O’Fallon — Five people (No change reported since June 7)
- Help at Home in O’Fallon — Five people (No change reported since May 4)
- TDL Inc. in Belleville — Four people (No change reported since May 6)
- Caseyville Nursing and Rehab — Three people (No change reported since May 28)
- Atrium of Belleville — Two people (No change reported since June 8) Roberto Roma, the Atrium of Belleville’s executive director, said previously that the two people affected by COVID-19 were an employee who quarantined and a resident who moved out of the facility in March.
- Help at Home in Belleville — Two people (No change reported since May 23)
The website medicare.gov records the number of beds for Medicare- and Medicaid-certified nursing homes.
This story was originally published June 16, 2020 at 7:08 PM.
