Coronavirus Cases Increase in North Alabama Nursing Homes

More Than 1600 People Have Contracted Coronavirus in Area Nursing Homes

This pandemic -- we've been tracking how nursing homes have been impacted by the virus.

Both with staff and residents.

Facilities have been adopting different systems to keep everyone safe.

Even so -- at this point in the pandemic -- a total of more than 1600 people at nursing homes in north alabama have contracted coronavirus.

According to data from the centers for disease control -- as of august 23 -- 95 people have died from the virus.

Two of those were nursing home staff.

Let's take a closer look at the numbers here.

Taking a look at the map -- madison county has seen the most total cases with 350.

18 people have died here.

Morgan county has 297 total cases with 19 deaths.

On the other end of the spectrum -- is lawrence county with only 40 cases and three deaths.

The thing to bear in mind here -- lawrence county only has one nursing home.

Compare that to jackson county -- which has 45 cases and one death.

But jackson county has three nursing homes.

Now those were cumulative totals.

As we said -- this data only runs through august 23 -- so let's look at the most recent week.

Here we see there were 136 total cases and six deaths.

Madison county is still the leader in this most recent week -- with 65 cases.

Breaking that down -- there were 32 residents and 33 staff members who testes positive for the virus.

There were also four residents who died that week.

The main source of this spike comes from signature healthcare of whitesburg gardens.

Data reported to the c-d-c shows they had 14 residents and 27 staff members test positive that week.

One resident death was also recorded that week.

Thank you will.

Right now 213 nursing homes in alabama are suppose to receive rapid testing machines by the end of this month.

More than 30 of those nursing homes are in north alabama.

These testing kits are coming from the centers for medicare and medicaid services.

Most nursing facilities are administrating weekly