COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has formed several Congregate Care Unified Response Teams, with the goal of testing residents and staff members at skilled nursing facilities in the state.
“Nursing facilities have been aggressive regarding testing and managing COVID-19 outbreaks on their own, but this effort will provide them with additional resources,” says DeWine. “As we continue to ramp up our testing in Ohio, we must deploy our resources in a way that will save the most lives.”
The response team will include medically trained members of the Ohio National Guard. Testing begins this week.
All staff members throughout the state will be tested to help nursing home administrators gauge the status of the virus in their facilities and help isolate the virus to stop it from infecting their community.
Further testing will be conducted in facilities where residents or workers have confirmed or assumed positive cases. At those facilities, testing will be conducted on all staff, and the testing of residents will be based on a clinically driven strategy that targets those who have likely been exposed to COVID-19.
In addition, the Congregate Care Unified Response Teams will begin the testing of all residents and staff members in the state’s eight developmental centers to try to limit the spread of COVID-19 in congregate care settings.
There are 33,006 confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 in Ohio and 2,002 confirmed and probable COVID-19 deaths. A total of 5,579 people have been hospitalized, including 1,450 admissions to intensive care units.