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EDITORIAL: Countywide vigilance helps prevent nursing-home outbreaks

Marin Independent Journal - 7/26/2020

Jul. 26--Since the March outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic across Marin, the attention of public health officials has largely been focused on Marin's older population.

That and Marin's proximity to parts of the Bay Area with higher rates of coronavirus have been the reasons behind the county's slow and cautious pace in relaxing the "lockdown," compared to many other counties and parts of the nation.

In fact, our county is one of the 31 counties on Gov. Gavin Newsom's coronavirus "watchlist," where stricter public health requirements are being imposed until there are signs of a reduction in infections, hospitalizations and deaths.

Better than 94% of Marin's deaths attributed to the novel coronavirus have been senior citizens, but the growth in cases has been among Marin's younger population.

Marin reported 35 deaths through Thursday. By comparison, Sonoma County's virus-related death count was 24, even though its population is 234,000 people larger than Marin's population of 260,000. Most of the recent Marin deaths have occurred in local senior care facilities.

For weeks, a team of health-care workers have been conducting weekly testing of residents and staffs the 33 local senior homes and nursing facilities that have reported positive cases.

San Rafael's Marin Post Acute has been hit hard with 89 positive tests and 12 deaths.

Tracing has shown that outbreaks in Marin senior homes often start with a staff member who spreads it to residents and patients, underscoring the need to curtail the outbreak in the greater Marin community.

That includes stopping the crisis-level spread of the virus among inmates and staff at San Quentin State Prison where the number of cases in the prison are equal to about 25% of the cases counted countywide.

The recent surge in cases and hospitalizations -- after a couple of months of the encouraging so-called "flattening of the curve" -- has led to stricter requirements for wearing masks, rolling back the reopening of many businesses and delaying return to classrooms for local school students.

It is vital, however, that regular testing focus on Marin's senior care facilities as a strategy to keep them as safe as possible for their vulnerable residents.

The spread of the coronavirus is far from over. Complacency, we are finding, fuels the virus' spread -- and risk of death.

Vigilant testing of staffs and residents at Marin's senior homes is a potentially life-saving strategy that needs to be an emphasis of our local leaders. But that same vigilance needs to be exercised by the community to help curtail the risk and help prevent COVID-19 from reaching these facilities and its vulnerable patients.

You know the drill: Wear a mask where required, maintain "social distancing" and wash your hands frequently. Those simple steps can curtail the spread of coronavirus and be a matter of life or death for the most frail members of our community.

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(c)2020 The Marin Independent Journal (Novato, Calif.)

Visit The Marin Independent Journal (Novato, Calif.) at www.marinij.com

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