Duggan says nearly 30 percent of nursing home patients testing positive in Detroit

DETROIT (FOX 2) - As the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in Detroit move into a more encouraging direction, the number of those infected and dying in nursing homes in the city are still troubling.

Mayor Mike Duggan said Monday in his daily press briefing that 119 nursing home residents have died from the virus. 

"I wouldn't be surprised when the final chapter of the coronavirus is written in Detroit if one out of four, or one out of five, of all of our victims were nursing home patients," he said. 

The city ramped up its testing recently with a 10-day plan to get every nursing home patient and staff member tested by Thursday. So far more than a thousand tests have been given at more than a dozen facilities.

"We are taking this very seriously. So again, this is an aggressive timeframe of hitting all 26 nursing homes," said Denise Fair, Chief Public Health Officer of the Detroit Health Department.

The city now using instant COVID-19 tests from Abbott Laboratories. The tests give results in under an hour. 

The city was given 5,000 testing kits and five machines that are now running 18 hours per day.

"It shows you how crippled this country has been with the lack of timely testing," Duggan said. 

With previous testing, Duggan says results wouldn't come for four or five days. Additionally, nursing homes have major issues separating those infected from those who weren't.

"When we realize the death rate we had, and we realized nursing homes had no way of properly isolating the infectious from non-infectious, we shifted gears," Duggan said. 

Mayor Duggan added that of all the nursing home patients they're testing, about 28-29% of them are testing positive.

"Probably the most troubling thing is those without symptoms are testing positive at almost as high a rate as those with symptoms."

And now the City is also delivering personal protection equipment like masks, gloves and hand sanitizer to the facilities that need them, essentially going door-to-door.

"We're giving the nursing homes the tools to fight back and we're able to protect our senior citizens."