All 62 residents of a Kansas nursing home have tested positive for the coronavirus, and 10 have died, health officials said. One resident is hospitalized, and the rest are being quarantined.
The Norton County health department announced the outbreak at the Andbe Home in Norton on Monday.
Fifty-one patients are being kept in their rooms, and an unspecified number of staff members have also tested positive at the northwestern Kansas center. All staff members are being tested, county health officials said.
“Steps are being taken to prevent any further outbreak including quarantining residents in their rooms and not allowing outside visitors into the facility,” the county health department said in a statement.
A representative of the nursing facility had left for the day and was unavailable for comment Tuesday night. A message was left seeking more details.
Family members of residents have been notified, officials said.
The Kansas Division of Emergency Management has provided resources to the county, which has a population of around 5,300 people, to help mitigate the outbreak, the county health department said.
Covid-19 cases have been rising across the Midwest, including in Kansas.
Nearly 73,000 cases have been recorded in the state, which has seen 872 Covid deaths, according to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment website, which was last updated Monday morning.
“The numbers are getting worse; you’ve seen that every week in terms of the prevalence,” Dr. Lee Norman, secretary of the state health department, said last week at a news conference in the Statehouse.
Norton is a city of around 2,800 people not far from the Nebraska border.
As of Tuesday night, more than 8 million Covid-19 cases had been recorded across the United States with more than 222,000 deaths, according to an NBC News’ count.
