Gov. Ron DeSantis authorized Monday the creation of Florida National Guard strike teams to test patients and staff in nursing homes and long-term care centers to “preemptively” identify those infected with the novel coronavirus but not showing symptoms.
Ten four-member National Guard teams immediately will spot check nursing homes, primarily in hard-hit south Florida, he said, “and we’ll probably expand it beyond that” statewide in the coming weeks.
Thirty National Guard paramedics trained in specimen collection and a dozen advanced life support ambulances have been spot checking asymptomatic people in south Florida nursing homes since last week.
“It is critical to identify people who test positive as early as possible, and this will help us do that,” DeSantis said. “You need to have a strike team going in and aggressively testing to try to preempt that.”
Data collected thus far confirms positive diagnoses are more common among staff than nursing home residents and long-term care patients, he said, adding, “It’s not that they weren’t following the protocols in some cases – they were – it’s just somebody didn’t show symptoms.”
DeSantis said the strike teams will deploy with a new five-minute “rapid” test.
Monday’s announcement came amid mounting criticism over the state’s policy of not revealing the names and locations of nursing homes and long-term care centers where staff, residents and patients have tested positive.
The Miami Herald is suing the state to release that information despite the DeSantis administration last week apparently convincing a law firm that represents the newspaper to not file the suit.
Herald Publisher Aminda Marqués González, in an article in the Miami Herald, said the newspaper will move ahead with the lawsuit.
“We are disappointed that the Governor’s Office would go so far as to apply pressure on our legal counsel to prevent the release of public records that are critical to the health and safety of Florida’s most vulnerable citizens,” Marqués González said. “We shouldn’t have had to resort to legal action in the first place.”
Since his initial coronavirus emergency order issued in early March, DeSantis has installed measures to protect nursing home residents and long-term care patients, including a ban on visitation.
With family members unable to visit and no information regarding the status of the disease at their loved one’s residence, Marqués González said the suit is necessary.
“Anyone with a relative in an elder care facility has a right to know if their loved ones are at risk so they can make an informed decision about their care,” she said.
As of a Monday, according to the state’s Department of Health (DOH), 962 residents and staff at 94 of the state’s more than 4,000 nursing homes had tested positive for the coronavirus.
Otherwise, reporting on how pervasive the disease is in specific sites is episodic, with sporadic revelations coming through county health departments.
In northeast Florida’s Clay County, 49 cases have been reported at nursing homes and long-term care centers by the county’s health department. On Friday, 51 residents and staff at Live Oak nursing home in Suwannee County were confirmed COVID-19 positive.
Also Friday, “multiple” residents of the Braden River Rehabilitation Center in Bradenton tested positive, according to the Bradenton Herald, which also reports 33 COVID-19 cases at nursing homes and LTC centers in Manatee County and 17 in Sarasota County.
Lee County health officials this weekend reported 16 positive tests in Lee County long-term care facilities, and 29 have been confirmed in nursing homes in Charlotte County, which is, demographically, the country’s “oldest” county.
