Six more local people died from COVID-19 related illnesses between Monday and Tuesday, the Naugatuck Valley Health District reported.
Five of the six people who died were residents of nursing homes or assisted living facilities in Seymour or Shelton. The sixth person, a Shelton resident, was a patient in a hospital that wasn’t named.
As of Tuesday, April 14, the Valley had experienced 54 COVID-19 related deaths.
The latest tally from the Naugatuck Valley Health District regarding the number of positive tests per town:
Ansonia: 96
Beacon Falls: 22
Derby: 56, with one death
Naugatuck: 97
Oxford: 42
Not part of the NVHD, click here.
Seymour: 86, with five deaths
Shelton: 263, with 48 deaths
Total: 620 positive tests, 281 negative tests, 54 deaths
Click here for an online COVID-19 dashboard from Johns Hopkins University. It contains big picture recovery data.
Of the 54 local deaths, 48 were residents of nursing homes or assisted living facilities.
Facilities with COVID-19 positive residents include Shady Knoll in Seymour, along with Shelton Lakes Apple Rehab, Bishop-Wicke Health and Rehabilitation, and Gardner Heights Health Care Center in Shelton.
As of April 14, 171 people living in nursing homes, assisted living facilities and similar facilities comprised 28 percent of all COVID-19 positive cases locally.
About six weeks into Connecticut’s COVID-19 outbreak, and specific information regarding nursing homes still has not been released. It was an area of questioning raised by several members of the media during Gov. Ned Lamont’s daily update to the public Tuesday.
A reporter from The Day in New London asked if the state had information on how many nursing home workers in the state have tested positive for COVID-19.
Josh Geballe, the state’s chief operating officer, said officials are putting together a list of the number of COVID-19 positive cases in individual nursing homes.
Lamont said he’s aware that people are clamoring for more specific information on what’s happening in nursing homes.
“I want you to know while Josh is gathering all that information, we’re also making sure that each nursing home has the opportunity to share the information with all the families of the loved ones now there so that nobody is surprised going forward,” the governor said.
He expected an individual nursing home list to be released in a few days.
A reporter from The Republican-American of Waterbury also asked the governor about the lack of information about nursing homes, questioning whether the state was simply giving nursing home owners a chance to prepare a reaction.
“As the governor said earlier, this is a very, very sensitive issue for the people in those nursing homes and we want to make sure that when we publish that data we get it perfectly correct, and that those families have time to be notified, and there is no confusion about those numbers,” Geballe said.
Statewide there have been 671 COVID-19 related deaths. Click here for the latest data from the state.
Click the play button on the video below to watch the governor’s Tuesday update. The full Tuesday statement from the Naugatuck Valley Health District is embedded below the video.
NVHD COVID-19 Case Update – April 14 2020 by The Valley Indy on Scribd
