Editor’s note: Numbers for the nursing homes in Greenfield have been updated.
Local legislators are trying to get to the bottom of why Franklin County, and Greenfield in particular, appears to be a COVID-19 hot spot.
Sen. Jo Comerford said she and her colleagues, both in the Senate and the local delegation, consisting of herself, Sen. Adam Hinds and Reps. Natalie Blais, Susannah Whipps and Paul Mark, have been pushing for data so they can understand why it seems Franklin County has had an unusual number of deaths from the disease, considering the size of the area and its population.
“We met with (state Secretary of Health and Human Services Marylou) Sudders to talk about data that was released a couple of weeks ago,” Comerford said. “The team wanted to understand why the numbers appeared to be so high for this area.”
Comerford said nursing homes seem to be one of the main reasons the numbers are so high. There are three nursing homes in Greenfield, and so far, they have, for the most part, reported only positive cases, with Buckley HealthCare Center reporting more than 30, but not reporting the number of deaths, and Poet’s Seat Health Care Center reporting somewhere between 10 and 30 (the state Department of Public Health provides this data using ranges), but also not providing the number of deaths. Charlene Manor Extended Care, on the other hand, has publicly reported four deaths. There have also been many cases of COVID-19 reported among residents and staff.
“We learned that COVID deaths per positive patients seemed very large in Franklin County, but that had to do with a small number of tests being administered early on,” she said. “Testing has since been ramped up.”
Comerford said she learned that the lack of testing — for many weeks, only the very sickest were being tested in Franklin County — was the main reason county numbers seemed so high. The next largest factor was that there are so many nursing homes and assisted living facilities in the area, as well as a large elderly population, all factors indicating vulnerability to the disease.
Franklin Regional Council of Governments (FRCOG) Director of Community Services Phoebe Walker said for weeks that one of the reasons numbers have appeared so high throughout Franklin County, especially in Greenfield, is testing.
She said officials have been aware all along that there were many more people who had COVID-19 throughout the county, but had only received a clinical diagnosis and were told to just quarantine themselves unless they got much worse. Those people were not added to the number of positive cases and many recovered without an issue. She said on top of that, there have been many others, officials believe, who sought no care at all, because they were asymptomatic and had no idea they were sick.
The state Department of Public Health only recently started reporting daily numbers broken down by town, and recently added nursing homes and assisted living facilities to those reports. Before the state started more comprehensive reporting, officials said they, too, believed there wasn’t enough testing, so the numbers would be skewed. Now that there is more testing, local and state officials have said the numbers are more realistic.
Comerford said another factor that has added to the numbers in Franklin County is that some of the people who died of COVID-19 at the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke were residents of Franklin County. Those deaths are recorded by place of residence before admission, not Holyoke.
As of Thursday, data from FRCOG showed that Greenfield reported 213 cumulative cases, with 89 recoveries and 36 deaths — 36 is 16.9 percent of 213, but testing has recently increased, so officials expect the ratio of fatalities to cases to start to decrease.
Comerford said, for instance, because two of the three nursing homes in Greenfield have each reported a high number of deaths, then deaths per 100,000 are higher than other parts of the state or even the nation.
“This is what is making the delegation and all legislators across the state work even harder for nursing homes,” Comerford said.
She said she and other state officials are confident Franklin County’s and Greenfield’s numbers will start to drop now that there is more testing, and now that testing is mandatory for all residents and staff in nursing homes.
Earlier this week, Baystate Health announced that Baystate Franklin Medical Center is testing everyone who has a referral from their doctor or an urgent care facility, not just those in the Baystate system as was happening originally. Additionally, Athol Hospital is testing anyone who wants a test, with or without a referral, as long as they sh ow symptoms of COVID-19, such as a fever, a cough or shortness of breath.
Reach Anita Fritz at 413-772-9591 or afritz@recorder.com.