GRAFTON — Two more people who tested positive for COVID-19 in Ozaukee County have died. Both of them lived at Village Pointe Commons, the nursing home in Grafton, where there's been an outbreak of coronavirus.
The latest victims are an 87-year-old man and an 82-year-old woman. Both were in long-term care in the memory unit. The woman was the first person who tested positive for COVID-19 at the facility.
Another resident, Robert Blackbird, died last week. The 91-year-old was in hospice.
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Now, Kirsten Johnson - the director of the Washington Ozaukee County Health Department - is sharing a warning about other facilities.
"Please learn from what we have figured out because this is happening everywhere, and we need to slow the spread as much as we can," Johnson said. "I would venture to guess that every facility in both of our counties, and throughout southeast Wisconsin have similar numbers, they just aren't aware of it yet."
There have been at least 13 positive cases of COVID-19 reported among staff and residents at Village Pointe Commons. Last weekend, the Wisconsin National Guard sent six military medics to the facility to help.
Johnson confirms five additional nursing homes in Washington and Ozaukee Counties have reported outbreaks of COVID-19 since Saturday, March 21st.
"When we realized this, is when we became alarmed, and it's exactly why we've issued the orders we have over the last week," she said.
The newest health order forbids any nursing home staff or caregivers from working at multiple facilities in the area, as many of them do.
"Staff in these facilities often work for staffing agencies, or they are employed by more than once facility," Johnson said. "The same goes for hospice providers and hospice caregivers. That introduces significant more risk to the individuals living in those facilities, and to those caregivers themselves. They're being exposed."
Johnson has already mandated that nursing home residents stay quarantined in their rooms and that all staff wear personal protective equipment, otherwise known as PPE. The same goes for first responders who are called to nursing homes.
"EMS was being called to a fall or chest pain, those people would then be transported to the hospital, and when they were tested for COVID-19, it came back positive," Johnson said. "Then we start backtracking, and those first responders weren't wearing PPE, because they weren't called for COVID-19 related emergencies."
She hopes a similar statewide order follows, and other places take notice quickly.