COVID Hits Local Schools, Long-term Care Facilities

OZAUKEE COUNTY, Wis.—COVID-19 is spreading and making waves through schools and long-term care facilities in Washington and Ozaukee counties, according to Washington-Ozaukee Public Health Director Kirsten Johnson.

“We currently have 20 schools with investigations...and 13 long-term care facility outbreaks,” she said to the Washington-Ozaukee Joint Board of Health members on Friday. “One of them (a long-term facility outbreak) is rather concerning.”

After requesting assistance from Wisconsin Department of Health Services Monday to test all long-term care facility residents and staff at the one concerning facility, that facility didn’t hear back from state public health officials on Tuesday, Johnson said.

Washington-Ozaukee Public Health, then, stepped in to provide test swabs and help courier the tests to the Milwaukee Health Department lab.

“They have a pretty high number of people who are coming back positive,” according to Johnson.

Johnson did not disclose which facility was having the large outbreak, during the meeting. Her office staff did not elaborate on the location of the facility after being asked.

The long-term care facilities with active outbreaks listed on the Washington-Ozaukee Public Health dashboard include: Majestic Heights Assisted Living in Hartford; Harbor Club and Harbor Cove, Lincoln Village and Ozaukee Harbor Cove in Port Washington; The Pavilion at Glacier Valley and Serenity Villa in Slinger; Lasata Care Center and Crossings in Cedarburg and Cedarburg Health Services; Hawthorn Manor; New Perspective Senior Living; Cedar Lake Home Health and Hospice and Cedar Bay Assisted Living, east and west campuses, in West Bend.

Ozaukee County Administrator Jason Dzwinel said, “I can confirm that there are no COVID-19 positive residents at any of our Lasata facilities at this time.” Dzwinel added that DHS considers one positive case at a skilled care facility as an outbreak.

As to why Lasata Care Center and Lasata Crossings is still listed on the dashboard, he added, “testing was in response to a positive staff member two weeks ago.”

In regard to school investigations, Johnson said, “People are just being blatantly dishonest...They don’t want their children to be quarantined from school. They don’t want to miss work.”

Johnson, then, discussed what is occurring within Washington and Ozaukee county school communities. She said that “they (parents) are jeopardizing the ability to have school in person and other people’s health.”

According to Johnson, a family sent a known positive child to school, who was symptomatic. It has continued to happen since, Johnson added, saying that each school should now be cross-checking their attendance with a listing of positive students and those quarantined.

Washington County Board Chairperson Don Kriefall, who is also on the Joint Board of Health committee, asked if there was a way to get the word out and help the health department.

“We’ve been very nice,” wanting to work with families, the health director said. “I think we’re past that. We toyed with the idea of actually issuing isolation orders and sending a letter to people’s houses.”

Such notification to parents could state: “Your behavior, your dishonesty is going to result in your children’s school being shut down,” she said.

“If people aren’t complying voluntarily, we have to take further action,” Kriefall said. “The hammer may have to be dropped.”

Families have been trying to negotiate or change dates and who they’ve been in contact with from what was said during the initial interview, according to the public health director.

“We can’t trust what anyone is telling us,” she said. “Kids become symptomatic and parents are now refusing to test them, because they don’t want to have to quarantine the siblings. We’re really risking the spread in schools.”

Kriefall also asked about hospitalizations in relation to COVID infections.

Currently, Ozaukee County’s hospitalization rate is 7.62% and Washington County is 5.51%, according to the Washington-Ozaukee Public Health data dashboard.

Johnson said she thinks hospitalizations may increase in the coming months due to the younger ages, including 20 to 30-year-olds, infecting their parents and grandparents. “And that’s when we’re going to see the hospitalizations go up,” she said. “There will be implications for their families.”

Joint Board of Health member Cathy Cero-Jaeger, who was faculty member at Concordia University of Wisconsin School of Nursing and was the former registered nurse from the Mequon-Thiensville School District, expressed concern that some people, including kids, were really becoming sick with COVID symptoms. She mentioned they could suffer side effects such as heart problems, brain fog and fatigue.

A Science Magazine article published by Jennifer Couzin-Frankel on July 31 on this topic stated: “The list of lingering maladies from COVID-19 is longer and more varied than most doctors could have imagined,” it said. “Ongoing problems include fatigue, a racing heartbeat, shortness of breath, achy joints, foggy thinking, a persistent loss of sense of smell, and damage to the heart, lungs, kidneys, and brain. The likelihood of a patient developing persistent symptoms is hard to pin down because different studies track different outcomes and follow survivors for different lengths of time.”

Studies of after effects are continuing, the article said.

It further stated that according to University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine Radiologist Ali Gholamrezanezhad, “We expected to see a lot of long-term damage from COVID-19: scarring, decreased lung function, decreased exercise capacity,” he said, when reviewing COVID cases from Asia. “Hundreds of scans later, he has concluded that COVID-19 ravages the lungs less consistently and aggressively than SARS did, when about 20% of patients sustained lasting lung damage. COVID-19 is in general a milder disease.”