Vithoulkas issues stern warning to senior communities: 'When we call, pick up the phone'

With a sternly-worded message, Henrico County Manager John Vithoulkas this evening at once admonished the leadership of the Canterbury Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center – where 16 residents have now died from COVID-19 – and served warning to the county’s 40 other senior communities.

“My message to them is, when we knock on your door, let us in,” Vithoulkas said. “When we call, pick up the phone. We are here, ladies and gentlemen, to help. Our county will not waver in its commitment to meet the needs of our community."

After the first several cases of the virus were confirmed in residents at Canterbury, Henrico officials called and offered a myriad of support, Vithoulkas said – from connecting it with private ambulance companies and resources for personal protective equipment and supplies to healthcare staffing agencies specializing in COVID-19 support.

"We knocked on the door initially, and the reaction was not positive,” he said. “That changed in a matter of days."

But by then, it may have been too late. A handful of cases became a dozen, then two dozen, then more. By the time the facility contracted with a private company to test all of its residents, nearly a dozen had died from the virus. Five more died between noon yesterday and noon today, bringing the overall total to 16 – the largest number of virus-related fatalities at a single site in the state.

Today, the facility announced that 92 living residents have the virus, though 53 of them are not demonstrating any symptoms. Twenty-six employees also have contracted the virus.

Had widespread testing occurred as soon as the initial cases were announced at the facility, the results might have been different, Henrico Health Director Danny Avula said. Health department officials are trying to apply what they’ve learned from the Canterbury outbreak and apply it to small clusters of positive cases at a handful of other senior communities in the county, he said.

“I hope that what you all take away from all this is that we’re dealing with an enemy here in COVID-19 that is extremely difficult to identify, extremely difficult to control,” he said.

This morning, the Virginia Department of Health reported that 87 Henrico residents had tested positive for COVID-19; at this evening’s press conference, Avula said that number is now actually 205, with "significant increases" expected in the days to come.

Lessons learned
Henrico officials will be contacting all of the other 40 senior communities in the county tomorrow, Vithoulkas said, to offer the same type of support they initially offered to Canterbury.

“There are a number of lessons. . . from this first series of cases [at Canterbury],” he said. “Had we had the opportunity – we actually offered – to have testing done quicker, sooner, I think that perhaps we would have had results sooner and been able to act, have all of the providers act quicker.”

Though it hasn’t been a factor in any of the COVID-19 clusters in Henrico senior communities yet, Avula expressed concern that employees who work at multiple facilities could eventually spread the virus from one to another.

Canterbury has notified all 147 of its employees that they must work only for Canterbury if they want to continue in their roles, he said. The other 10 facilities in the county with cases or potential cases have taken similar measures voluntarily, but there may come a time soon at which state officials may need to mandate such limitations, Avula said.

Avula has spoken with representatives from the Washington state nursing homes that experienced significant virus outbreaks initially and asked if they considered taking such measures but was told that most didn’t because they wouldn’t have had enough employees to continue operation.

Avula praised Canterbury for its decision to independently arrange for all of its residents to be tested.

“The results of this will serve as a model for other facilities,” he said.