Seattle, Washington was ground zero for Covid-19 in the US and most cases in Washington State (see image below) were known to be associated with long term care homes from the very beginning. This has turned out to be true virtually everywhere in the world. This means the risk of this coronavirus to the general population is even smaller than has been assumed by health advisors. However, because numbers of care home deaths and confirmed cases are inconsistently reported worldwide, governments almost everywhere have been reluctant to lift restrictions on movements of people who do not live or work in these well-defined hotspots of Covid-19 infection.
I live in Victoria and travel to Seattle fairly often, in part because the cheapest and fastest way to Alaska and the rest of the US is via Seattle. Because of its physical proximity, I have kept a close eye on the virus situation in Seattle. In addition, a good friend of mine in Victoria had a relative in the Kirkland Life Care Centre in Seattle, which recorded one of the first deaths in the US. His ‘insider’ information tells us some interesting things about why long-term care facilities like these are being hit so hard by Covid-19. I thought it might be worth sharing what I’ve learned about this developing story.
UPDATE 25 April 2020: US Medicaid officials have summarized (as of April 23) Covid-19 deaths and confirmed cases in long term care facilities (by state) for those that report this data. They point out that until April 19, long term care homes were not required to report cases or deaths to the CDC and state [my bold]:
Our data collection effort finds that in the 23 states that publicly report death data as of April 23, 2020, there have been over 10,000 reported deaths due to COVID-19 in long-term care facilities (including residents and staff), representing 27% of deaths due to COVID-19 in those states. Our data also finds that there have been over 50,000 reported cases, accounting for 11% of coronavirus cases in 29 states. In six states reporting data, deaths in long-term care facilities account for over 50% of all COVID-19 deaths (Delaware, Massachusetts, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Utah; Table 2)…The total cases and deaths from reporting states accounts for just over half (53%) of all cases, and 81% of all deaths. Given that not all states are reporting data yet and the continual lag in testing, the counts of cases and deaths are an undercount of the true number of cases and deaths in long-term care facilities.
Also, the State of Massachusetts is one of those that do report long-term care facility deaths and associated cases, pdf here for April 24.
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