Hundreds of South Jersey nursing home residents have had coronavirus, new figures show

At one Cherry Hill nursing home, a quarter of the residents have contracted the coronavirus and 11 people have died.

Nine miles away in Burlington County, another facility is battling the virus that has infected at least 54 people. Eight have died.

And one company that operates long-term-care facilities across the country has reported 263 cases across six locations in five New Jersey counties. The founder of the company died Monday as a result of complications due to the coronavirus.

The pandemic’s grip on nursing homes and other long-term-care centers in New Jersey came into clearer view Monday, when state officials reversed their earlier resistance to name the facilities where residents have tested positive for the virus, and published a list of 425 such facilities.

While a handful of homes in North Jersey were hit hardest — like the Veterans Memorial Home in Paramus, where 155 residents tested positive and 39 died — facilities in South Jersey were not spared, as dozens of facilities in the three counties self-reported hundreds of cases and nearly 100 deaths.

The coronavirus has spread rapidly in care homes across the country. The elderly and people with underlying conditions are particularly susceptible to contracting and dying from complications associated with COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus.

In Pennsylvania, about half of the state’s 1,100 known coronavirus-related deaths have been residents of long-term-care facilities. In New Jersey, that figure is 40%. More than 10,700 of the state’s 88,000 positive patients are individuals who lived in these facilities.

Thirty-nine long-term-care facilities in Camden, Burlington, and Gloucester Counties reported positive cases, accounting for at least 765 of the Garden State’s positive coronavirus cases and 96 of its 4,200 deaths. The numbers released by the state are based on reports by each facility and may not reflect real-time data.

Among the facilities with double-digit case counts is Avista Healthcare in Cherry Hill, where at least 41 people — a quarter of the number of beds there — tested positive for COVID-19, and 11 residents died. The figure includes patients who tested positive before dying, as well as people who had pending test results or who died as a result of a respiratory illness but coronavirus testing wasn’t performed.

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A person who works at the 162-bed facility on Chapel Avenue West, who did not want to be identified because of not being authorized to speak publicly about the workplace, said leadership at the home acted in a reactionary manner until the facility’s first confirmed case and didn’t implement infection control measures, such as requiring health-care workers to wear masks and halting all communal activities, until early April.

Over the last two weeks at Avista, executives have put in place stronger precautions and are keeping residents isolated, the staffer said, but employees remain concerned about how long-term-care facilities can keep patients and staff safe as reserves of personal protective equipment deplete.

“It’s a beast of a problem,” the person said. “Employees are like, ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t have what I need, I am not coming back to work.’ So how do we make these long-term-care facilities safe?”

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Federal regulators rated Avista, a for-profit facility, “much below average,” awarding it one out of four stars as a result of poor health inspections within the last several years. Records showed 10 complaints about the facility resulted in a citation over the past three years.

The facility was most recently inspected about a year ago, and investigators reported violations like record-keeping problems and failure to review patient drug regimens. At the time, Avista’s staffing levels were rated average and its “quality of resident care” above average.

The facility is owned by MIMA Healthcare, which also operates three other facilities in New Jersey and one in Vermont. MIMA officials and the facility administrator didn’t respond to requests for comment.

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The volume of coronavirus cases in New Jersey nursing homes varied widely by county and facility, with some having registered just a handful of cases while others had dizzying totals.

One company in particular typified this broad spectrum: Genesis HealthCare. At least 263 positive coronavirus cases and 46 deaths were reported at six Genesis facilities in Burlington, Cape May, Bergen, Essex, and Union Counties. A Genesis facility in Cape May Court House had just four positive cases, and no reported deaths, but another in Bergen County had 73 positive cases, and 16 deaths.

Genesis’ Victoria Manor, set amid a lightly wooded area in North Cape May just minutes from the Delaware Bay, has had 52 confirmed COVID-19 cases and nine deaths. The Victoria Manor Facebook page features posts that veer from stoic to cheery, like a photo, posted Monday, of a stack of pizza boxes that were sent by community residents in a show of appreciation for the facility’s employees. Other posts underscore the seriousness of the pandemic.

Richard A. Feifer, Genesis’ chief medical officer, wrote an op-ed that was published by Fox News, and called on President Donald Trump to ensure that nursing homes have badly needed personal protective equipment.

“He would save seniors who continue to die,” Feifer wrote.

Genesis officials could not be reached for comment. The company is based in Kennett Square, and has nearly 400 nursing homes and assisted living facilities across the country; last year, it reported more than $4.5 billion in revenue.

Its residents aren’t the only ones who have been claimed by the coronavirus. The company announced Monday that its founder, Michael R. Walker, died Saturday at age 71 from complications from COVID-19 in addition to battling a long-term illness.

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Over the last month, New Jersey health officials have required virus-prevention measures in long-term care facilities, including significantly restricting facility visitors, ordering staff to wear masks while in contact with patients, and conducting reviews of personal protective inventory, staffing plans, and isolation procedures.

Still, the disease spread rapidly through these facilities. And since the early days of the state’s crisis, advocates have urged health officials to release the names of long-term-care facilities that have a coronavirus patient.

Public health officials in California and Delaware have released specifics on which facilities have confirmed cases, but state executives elsewhere, including Pennsylvania, have largely resisted, relying on facilities to notify patient families of potential exposure.

In New Jersey, after reports broke of the Andover Subacute & Rehabilitation Center piling 18 bodies into a morgue meant to hold four people, the state moved to strengthen its response.

“There’s profound, tragic, big and small lessons that all of us have learned,” Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday.

State officials have reviewed 21 of the state’s 421 long-term-care facilities as part of an effort to manage the spread of infections in facilities with highly vulnerable patients.

Officials, who didn’t identify the facilities under review, are examining staffing plans, inventories of protective equipment, and outbreak procedures. Sites that are not up to state standards will have to file correction plans this week.