A nursing home in rural Maine has found a new partner after a difficult few weeks battling COVID-19 after months fighting the pandemic, which has killed more.
Updated on January 27, 2021 at 8:38 pm
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A nursing home in rural Maine has found a new partner after a difficult few weeks battling COVID-19 after months fighting the pandemic, which has killed more than a dozen of its residents.
At the end of last year, about half of the staff at Island Nursing Home on Deer Isle came down with COVID-19.
That’s about 38 people, the nursing home’s CEO, Matthew Trombley, said in a Wednesday interview with NECN and NBC10 Boston. At that point, a call was made to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention to ask for assistance to avoid having to move residents out of the home.
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A shortage of nurses, aides and other staff at nursing homes across Maine is worsening amid a deadly COVID-19 pandemic that has exacerbated the industry’s long-standing workforce challenges in the nation’s oldest state.
“The situation is dire,” said John Orestis, president and CEO of North Country Associates, the state’s largest Maine-based long-term care provider. “North Country, between the homes that it owns and manages, has 26 buildings and I would say a large majority … of them have extremely difficult situations.”
More than one third of nursing homes in Maine reported shortages of both nurses and aides at the beginning of this month, while more than 20 percent were short on other staff, according to reports filed with federal regulators.
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The sign at the entrance to Island Nursing Home in the Hancock County town of Deer Isle. Students from the University of New England’s nursing and osteopathic medicine program have been helping work at the home since a COVID-19 outbreak in November and December led to staff shortages.
Kevin Miller/Staff Writer
DEER ISLE For eight months, staff at Island Nursing Home had managed to keep the virus away from residents of their small facility in this historic fishing community.
But when COVID-19 finally arrived just before Thanksgiving, it swept through the Deer Isle nursing home with “insidious” ferocity. Every one of the home’s 62 residents was sickened – 15 of them fatally – along with 38 staff members, despite efforts to immediately segregate and isolate cases.
Outbreak at nursing home winds down
DEER ISLE The Island Nursing Home, as of Monday, had lost 14 residents to COVID-19, according to Matthew Trombley, senior executive director. There are now 47 residents.
“We are at 14 [deaths], but we are at 98 percent recovered,” Trombley said. One resident had not yet fully recovered on Monday.
The outbreak at the nursing home began the day before Thanksgiving and spread rapidly among the population of 62 residents and 85 staff members. All residents and 38 staff members would eventually test positive.
On Nov. 25, there were three nursing home residents and two staff members who had tested positive for COVID-19. The following day, on Thanksgiving, INH was notified that there were 21 residents with COVID and two more staff members, said Trombley. By Nov. 29, that number had risen to 35 residents and 10 staff members with the virus.