LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Some residents in a Kentucky nursing home were evacuated to area hospitals after nearly 60 residents and employees tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
The plan to evacuate residents who tested positive for the virus was told to families over the weekend after Nazareth Home’s Clifton Campus in Louisville discovered on Friday that about 40 residents and approximately 20 staff members had tested positive for the virus, news outlets reported.
Diane Curtis, a communication director of Nazareth Home Ministries, told the Courier Journal the nursing home requested the testing after some residents began to show symptoms of the coronavirus last week. Many of those who tested positive did not show symptoms.
Rosemary Moore, one of the residents who tested positive for the virus, was brought to a hospital Monday night. “I don’t know if she’s going to make it, and it’s heart-wrenching,” Diane Streicher, Moore’s daughter, told WHAS-TV.
The evacuations began after it was “apparent the facility was going to have a very tough time providing enough staff to the residents that they had in that facility,” state Health and Family Services Secretary Eric Friedlander said in a news conference Tuesday.
The testing at the nursing home was done as part of the state’s long-term care task force that has tested thousands for the virus in facilities across Kentucky.
Nazareth Home’s second location will receive testing on June 1.