South Florida nursing home became ‘fertile ground’ for coronavirus, inspection reveals
Source: WPLG
Fair Havens Center has over 120 COVID-19 cases and proper measures weren’t taken to prevent spread, state agency says
MIAMI SPRINGS, Fla. – A nursing home with at least 128 confirmed cases of COVID-19 has been slapped with an emergency moratorium on admissions after Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration said the facility created “fertile ground for the virus to spread within the population.”
Dozens of residents of the Fair Havens Center in Miami Springs were loaded into ambulances Sunday and taken to a hospital. Eight residents have died from COVID-19, according to the health department.
Documents obtained by Local 10 News on Monday detail an inspection that happened on Thursday. They describe some shocking conditions, including finding that 11 residents who tested positive for COVID-19 were placed in two bedrooms with residents who were not positive for the virus. And “at least 15 COVID-19 negative residents were exposed to COVID-19 … because of it,” the report says.
The inspection also identified issues in a space designated as an “isolation” area, saying lunch trays for residents in that area weren’t identified as potentially contaminated and were placed with the non-COVID resident trays for cleaning. The same went for laundry, with positive residents’ clothes being mixed in with those who didn’t have the virus.
On Sunday, Local 10 cameras watched dozens of residents transported from Fair Havens to Hialeah Hospital — part of the AHCA’s plan to curtail the spread in these facilities.
“You have a number of individuals who are in semi-private rooms, so it is incredible difficult to prevent the spread,” said Mary Mayhew, the secretary of Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration. “Which is why we have been partnering with hospitals in the counties to support timely transfers out of these facilities so two cases do not become 20, or five become 50.”
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