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The coronavirus has killed one senior care home employee in Oregon, state data published Wednesday shows.
The Oregon Health Authority’s weekly summary noted that a person who worked in a congregate care setting has died from the coronavirus.
The state won’t say where the employee worked to protect their privacy, the health authority said, and released no other information.
But while the congregate care category includes mental health facilities and child foster homes, the state has reported COVID-19 deaths only at senior care homes.
The publication comes after weeks of state refusals to provide detailed case and death data for long-term care homes, even as other states published similar data and the Oregon ombudsman and two state senators called for disclosure of the information.
Sen. Sara Gelser, D-Corvallis, said the news of the employee death reinforces how important it is that workers in all care settings have access to protective equipment and “a robust testing protocol.”
“One death is too many and reminds us that front line workers and residents in congregate care settings are at very high risk of exposure and death during the pandemic,” Gelser said.
The state’s new data confirms for the first time that federal numbers showing eight staff deaths in Oregon nursing homes, published last week, were wrong. The federal numbers relied on information sent in directly by nursing homes. An Oregon home accidentally reported eight worker deaths.
More than half of all coronavirus deaths in Oregon — 92 — are connected to senior care homes, an Oregonian analysis of state data shows.
Of those deaths, about a third are associated with just one place — the Southeast Portland nursing home Healthcare at Foster Creek. The nursing home’s license is currently suspended while the state moves to revoke it altogether.
Oregon health officials publish facility-level case and death data for places with more than two cases or at least one death, but the numbers lump together residents, staff, close contacts and other unspecified categories.
The state’s latest senior care facility report shows 77 new coronavirus cases since the report a week ago, most of them connected to outbreaks at the Marquis Hope Village Post-Acute Rehab in Canby, The Springs at Willow Creek assisted living home in Salem and High Lookee Lodge, a Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs assisted living home.
Oregon’s cumulative senior care home case count now stands at more than 630. The state overall has reported more than 5,000 coronavirus cases.
Data Specialist David Cansler contributed to this report.
— Fedor Zarkhin
desk: 503-294-7674|cell: 971-373-2905|@fedorzarkhin
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