ANGOLA â During a normal year, Northern Lakes Nursing & Rehabilitation and Lakeland Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center are competitors, each seeking residents from the same pool of seniors who need care in Angola and the surrounding area.
But 2020 wasnât a normal year, and when the coronavirus pandemic swept into Indiana last spring, the administrators of both facilities chose to put aside their competing interests and work together for the betterment of their residents and the greater Angola community.
Now, for the first time, they are publicly talking about how their unconventional partnership ended up helping them navigate COVID-19 outbreaks that hit both facilities at roughly the same time last fall, which they ultimately credit with saving lives.
After some severe outbreaks at the end of 2020 and early into the new year, COVID-19 activity has slowed in area nursing homes.
Two centers had notable increases in cases, but otherwise there were few new cases among nursing home residents and staff this past week, said information from the Indiana State Department of Health.
For the week ending Jan. 20 â long-term care data lags a week via the state dashboard â the largest increase in activity occurred in Orchard Pointe in Kendallville, which added nine new resident cases, five staff cases and recorded at least one death among its residents.
Itâs the first death among Orchard Pointe residents as the center had previously been reporting zero and now shows less than five deaths.