More than half of the Elisabeth Ludeman Developmental Center’s 344 residents have tested positive for COVID-19, according to the Illinois Department of Human Services.
A universal testing initiative launched late last month for residents of the Park Forest facility for adults with developmental disabilities found 196 residents, about 57%, had contracted the coronavirus.
The figure, which is three times greater than any other developmental center in the state, includes both residents who are actively infected and residents who were infected and have since recovered, Human Services spokeswoman Meghan Powers said.
Powers could not immediately provide the number of Ludeman Center residents who had recovered from COVID-19.
Three residents have died after contracting the virus.
Until this past week, when the state began offering on-site testing for all Ludeman Center employees, access to testing had been limited to workers who showed symptoms or had been exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID-19.
As of Friday, 71 staffers had tested positive for COVID-19 and three had died, according to Human Services data.
It’s not clear how many of the facility’s 892 employees have been tested nor how many of the 71 who tested positive have recovered.
Securing testing for all employees, regardless of symptoms, had been a priority for the union that represents many of Ludeman’s frontline workers, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employee Council 31 spokesman Anders Lindall said.
“We know people can be asymptomatic carriers or they can transmit when they’re presymptomatic,” he said. “So out of concern for that…it was a top priority for us to make tests available to everyone.”
Multiple mental health technicians who provide hands-on personal hygiene care for residents inside Ludeman’s group homes said they suspected asymptomatic or presymptomatic workers who traveled between homes were responsible for spreading the virus.
A mental health technician who missed time after contracting COVID-19 said she believed the movement of staff between group homes was the primary reason so many residents had become infected and so many frontline workers were out sick.
“Staff may work in a COVID-19 positive house one day, and the next they are made to work in a house with no known COVID-19 cases,” the worker, who requested anonymity, said in an email. “THIS is how it is spreading so quickly there.”
She said she believed the reason COVID-19 hadn’t gotten into every group home — 3 of the 38 occupied homes still haven’t had a case — was that workers at homes with no known COVID-19 cases had refused entry to “floating” staffers.
“When someone shows up and it’s not (a regularly assigned) worker, they’re refusing to let them in the house,” she said.
In other instances, workers in homes with no known cases have called off rather than accept temporary assignments in homes with sick residents for fear of bringing the virus back to their regularly assigned home, the mental health tech said.
State officials said they’ve attempted to minimize the movement of staff between group homes, but said it was sometimes necessary to reassign workers due to widespread staffing shortages.
Any employees directed to work outside their normally assigned homes are supplied personal protective equipment, regardless of whether residents at their new home have tested positive for COVID-19, officials said.
To keep the facility adequately staffed and avoid moving workers between homes when possible, Ludeman has hired new workers, reassigned other workers, called back retired workers and brought in nurses and certified nursing assistants through the Illinois Emergency Management Agency and temp agencies, Powers said.
In total, 45 nurses and 30 certified nursing assistants, many of whom were reassigned from the wound-down coronavirus field hospital at McCormick Place, have provided assistance to Ludeman Center staff, she said.
The Illinois National Guard also recently deployed 22 Air National Guardsmen to the Ludeman Center to perform temperature checks and health screenings for employees at facility entrances to free up staff who’d previously been assigned that task.
The provision of personal protective equipment for staff, which had been an agency-wide struggle in the early days of the pandemic, has improved in recent weeks, several mental health techs said.
Still, some have continued bringing their own masks, surgical caps and gowns to ensure they’re covered, they said.
The recently recovered mental health tech said she continues to bring some of her own personal protective equipment and supplies such as bleach and soap, which remain in short supply inside the homes.
“No one at this point even knows,” if people who recover develop immunity, she said. “So I still have to act like I could definitely get it again.”
Lindall said the union was focused on making sure state officials continued to replenish personal protective equipment for workers and maintain an adequate inventory of supplies at the group homes.
AFSCME, which represents mental health technicians, licensed practical nurses, support service workers, doctors, social workers and psychologists at the Ludeman Center, recently negotiated a benefits package for its health care workers who had been excluded from coverage under the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act.
“The union’s position very strongly was that there has to be some commensurate provisions for these folks who have been exempted from the Families First coverage that Congress saw fit to pass,” Lindall said. “They shouldn’t somehow have a lesser benefit.”
As part of the deal, frontline staff at Ludeman and the state’s other developmental centers will receive a 12% pay premium for time worked between April 16 until at least May 31.
Workers with underlying medical conditions will receive priority for alternative work assignments and any who do get sick with COVID-19, are quarantined due to COVID-19 or are forced to care for someone with COVID-19 will receive unlimited paid time off without having to use personal time.
Staff represented by AFSCME also will have access to child care programs for $1 per month and will receive an additional personal day they may use in the 2021 calendar year, per the deal.
zkoeske@tribpub.com
Twitter @ZakKoeske
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