All nursing home residents and staff to be tested for COVID-19, governor announces

Gov. Jay Inslee on Thursday announced details of a plan to test all nursing home residents and staff members for COVID-19.

The directive requires nursing homes to offer tests to all residents, and administer them to those who consent, by June 12. The testing requirement for assisted living facilities with a memory care unit is by June 26.

Positive results must be reported immediately to the state, according to the order signed by state Secretary of Health John Wiesman.

Staff members are required to be tested unless they can provide medical justification from a licensed health care provider.

Exceptions are if residents or staff members have been tested after April 1.

On Tuesday, the state said 3,728 COVID-19 cases (19 percent of the total) and 667 deaths (62 per cent of the total) have been associated with long-term care facilities.

The order continues the state’s testing in nursing homes, said state Secretary of Health John Wiesman. That has involved screening staff members for symptoms and residents for respiratory problems, and testing those who have had symptoms, he said.

The round of testing over the next two weeks and month will enable the state to focus on facilities that have not had an outbreak, Wiesman said.

If the state finds residents who are asymptomatic, they can be clustered in the facilities, separate from others so that the spread of asymptomatic infection can be minimized, Wiesman said.

“There are asymptomatic infections; that is infection without any symptom and perhaps never developing symptoms. Maybe 25 to 40 per cent of cases could actually be asymptomatic. We didn’t know that at the beginning of this outbreak. This is a new virus,” he said.

The focus on testing in assisted living facilities with memory care units is due to a higher rate of COVID-19 infection, in part because those with memory issues “tend to wander and need to be able to move around as part of their daily living,” he said.

Inslee also said the state is working on providing repeat testing for the remainder of long-term care facilities, such as adult family homes and assisted living facilities without memory care units.

On a May 11 phone call with governors, Vice President Mike Pence and Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coordinator for the virus response, recommended that every nursing home resident and staff member in the nation be tested for COVID-19 by May 25.

The state will provide test kits and personal protective equipment for administering tests to every facility at no cost.

If a facility doesn’t receive enough kits and PPE to test all residents and staff, it must promptly notify the state Department of Health. Those facilities won’t be deemed to be in violation of the order.

The order says nursing homes and assisted living facilities with memory care units “are not obligated to pay laboratories for tests performed for residents or staff.”

Laboratories will obtain payment from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the state Health Care Authority for tests of residents and staff who are covered by Medicare and Medicaid. The state will pay laboratories for tests performed for staff who are not covered by Medicare or Medicaid.

This story was originally published May 28, 2020 at 2:50 PM.