A staff member at the assisted living facility for Elders in Nome has tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The Norton Sound Health Corporation reported early this afternoon that an employee of the Quyanna Care Center has COVID-19.
UPDATE: NSHC reports that all residents and staff at QCC were tested for the novel coronavirus. No additional positive cases were detected.
ORIGINAL: NSHC announced that the disease was caught by their routine employee screening and that the individual is now in isolation. The employee is not showing any symptoms and has not traveled outside of the region within the last three months.
Reba Lean is a spokeperson for NSHC and says that while all employees are tested every two-weeks, Quyanna Care employees are tested weekly. This is because they work with the elderly, a population that is at high risk for complications caused by the novel coronavirus. She says they are testing every resident and employee at the care facility and expect to be done with that testing by the end of day.
This is the eighth confirmed case of COVID-19 for the region. Lean reports that there are six recovered cases and two active. One of those active cases is the QCC employee from today. The other case is a resident of the Norton Sound region who tested positive outside of the region and is isolating elsewhere in the state.
NSHC notified the State of Alaska Section of Epidemiology and Public Health Nursing of the positive result. An investigation of the patient’s close contacts is reportedly underway.
Image at Top: Particles from the coronavirus. Photo in the public domain via Creative Commons
