King County has created a new online dashboard following COVID-19 cases and deaths in long-term care facilities in the area.
According to the dashboard, the Life Care Center of Kirkland has reported 45 deaths related to the novel coronavirus, the most of any other long-term care facility in the county.
Trailing the Life Care Center is the Enumclaw Health and Rehabilitation Center with 23 deaths; Issaquah Nursing and Rehabilitation with 19 deaths; Richmond Beach Rehabilitation and Park Ridge Care Center with 18 deaths; and Redmond Care and Rehabilitation at 17 deaths.
The dashboard is only naming long-term care facilities that have reported five or more deaths; facilities that reported fewer than five deaths were combined into one category.
It also shows skilled nursing facilities across King County — as opposed to assisted living facilities and adult family homes — had vastly more COVID-19 cases and deaths than other long-term care facilities. These cases and deaths are not necessarily just residents of those facilities, but staff and visitors as well.
Of the 52 skilled nursing facilities in the county, 36 (or nearly 70 percent) reported having COVID-19 cases, and as of May 7, there have been 200 total virus-related deaths in those facilities, accounting for two-thirds of all deaths inside long-term care facilities.
Roughly 25 percent of the 148 assisted living facilities in King County reported having COVID-19 cases, with a total of 75 deaths; only about 2 percent of the 1,164 adult family homes reported cases, and there were a total of 28 deaths.
The total of 303 deaths account for roughly 64 percent of all COVID-19 deaths in the county.
Although the majority of COVID-19 cases involved patients at these long-term care centers, around 335 total employees at these facilities reported becoming sick, with two deaths. Additionally, 23 visitors reported contracting the virus, with another two deaths. A dozen cases more and one additional death are still undetermined.
SYMPTOMS AND CO-MORBIDITIES
Patients that contracted COVID-19 reported having myriad symptoms.
The most commonly-reported symptoms were cough and fever, which were found in 39 and 38 percent of patients respectively.
About 27 percent of patients with the virus reported a shortness of breath, and 20 percent reported headaches.
Less common symptoms were pneumonia (16 percent), diarrhea (14.5 percent), sore throat (14 percent), chills (10 percent), nausea (9 percent), acute respiratory distress syndrome (9 percent), and vomiting (5 percent).
Roughly 32 percent of COVID-19 patients in long-term care facilities also reported “other” symptoms, which was its own category.
A third of patients also had at least one more condition in addition to having the coronavirus.
The most common co-morbidity (which only means concurrent conditions, and does not indicate death of these conditions) was heart disease at 18 percent.
Other co-morbidities included diabetes (13 percent), some sort of kidney disease (10 percent), and lung disease (9 percent).
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