At least 10 residents of an assisted living facility in Redwood City have died of COVID-19, including the former president of Stanford University, according to the director.
The grim news comes as the state released new data that shows more than 5,400 residents and health care workers at long-term care facilities have contracted the virus, and more than 539 of them have died.
The deaths at Gordon Manor are the most known of any residential care facility in the Bay Area. All the residents, including former Stanford President Donald Kennedy, died from the virus or complications related to the disease.
Facility Director Alisa Mallari Tu said around 20 residents and seven staffers have tested positive for COVID-19. Before the deadly virus struck, about 65 residents lived there.
“We are a family and we’re stuck in the middle of this situation,” she said.
The news of Kennedy’s death from the coronavirus reverberated throughout Stanford Medical School, and drove home the message that the disease does not discriminate: even the most well-regarded and well-run businesses can be hit with outbreaks — and death.
At assisted living facilities such as Gordon Manor, which are overseen by the state Department of Social Services, the number of infected residents and staff across California has reached 1,014, and 119 have died as of April 22.
Meanwhile, 2,638 patients and 1,804 health care workers at other long-term care facilities — skilled nursing homes — have tested positive as of April 22, according to the state health department that oversees them. That is surely an undercount, as the state list notes it only includes data reported by the facilities to the department within the past 24 hours — a snapshot in time.
Gateway Nursing and Rehabilitation Center has the largest outbreak among skilled nursing facilities in the Bay Area, with at least 13 patients dead and more than patients and workers positive for the virus, according to the state’s data from last week. The new list released Friday put the number of infected patients there at just 28, but health officials did not immediately comment on why that number was reduced. Similarly, the Orinda Care Center, where the infection at one point had reached at least 53 people and killed four, currently has 31 patients with COVID-19 infections. Excell Health Care Center, where three patients have died and 33 other patients and 17 staff have been infected, shows zero patient infections on the state report and fewer than 11 staff.
Among assisted living facilities, Atria’s senior living in Daly City has at least 24 cases among residents and staff. Two residents of Its sister facility, Atria of Burlingame, have died of COVID-19, but the business was not listed on the state’s most recent snapshot.
At Gordon Manor, health care workers from San Mateo County have come in to try to mitigate the infection, help provide care for the ill and fill in for workers who are out sick themselves.
“My heart goes out to all the people who are affected,” Mallari Tu said. “For our lovely community of elderly people we love, it’s a particularly daunting challenge. But it’s the challenge of our time, so we have to show up for it.”
Marina Martin, chief of Stanford’s geriatric medicine section at the School of Medicine, mentioned Gordon Manor this week during grand rounds, a conversation among medical experts at the university about the state of the fight against the virus.
“That’s the level at which they start thinking about evacuation,” Martin said during a phone interview Friday. “We need to have a backup plan in place to support these facilities.”
Martin said that unlike some facilities that have had cases with major violations, Gordon Manor “is probably the best place for memory care in our entire area.”
“They do an amazing job taking care of residents,” Martin said. “We’re seeing this at both the five star and the two star facilities. This environment and the virus together are a perfect recipe for disaster.”
The coronavirus has spread across facilities all over the state, but some of the particularly hard hit have had a history of issues with care, including with infection control and sanitization issues.
“We’re very aware that it’s almost impossible that cases would not have appeared in facilities, but we also know good infection control practices can minimize the spread,” said Santa Clara County assistant public health officer Dr. Elsa Villarino in a virtual news conference Friday.
Among skilled nursing homes In Santa Clara County, 39 patients at the Ridge Post-Acute Care Center in San Jose have tested positive, 37 patients have tested positive at Santa Clara’s Valley House Rehabilitation Center, 30 patients are infected at Canyon Springs Post-Acute Care Center in San Jose, where at least two patients have died, according to the new list released by the state Friday. All three facilities also have at least one staff member who is infected.
In San Mateo County, Daly City’s St. Francis Convalescent Pavilion has 25 patients with COVID-19. Nursing facilities in Alameda County with large numbers of infected patients include Redwood Healthcare Center in Oakland, which has 22 patients with COVID-19 and at least one staff member, and Windsor Post-Acute Care Center of Hayward, which has 17 patients with COVID-19 infections and at least one staff member.
Many facilities with outbreaks, including Canyon Springs, have asked families to remove their loved ones if they can. While a few families have pulled residents from Gordon Manor, Mallari Tu said, most have not, since the center provides care for people with dementia that many families aren’t equipped to handle at home.
Mallari Tu said she considered Kennedy, who died at the facility on Tuesday, a friend. She graduated from the university in 1990, when he was president, and the pair used to take a tai chi class together.
“It’s come full circle,” Mallari Tu said. “I was with him at his ending days and told him how much we loved him and that I was grateful for the opportunity to have met him.”
