Feds sending health experts to a Washington hospital as state’s death toll from coronavirus reaches nine

This bug gets loose in another nursing home and we’ll see the same thing.

Two more residents of King County, Washington, have died from the coronavirus, bringing the state’s total to nine, as a top health official tells US senators he is deploying more personnel to a Kirkland hospital where most of the patients died.

The two additional victims actually died before the previously reported deaths, on February 26. They were identified as a woman in her 80s who died at her family home and man in his 50s who died at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, county health officials said in a statement.

Both were residents of Life Care Center, a chain of long-term nursing facilities that is linked to many of the fatal cases, officials said.

The state has had at least 21 cases. Eight of those who died were from King County, and one was from Snohomish County, county officials said. At least six of the patients died at EvergreenHealth in Kirkland, where the federal health experts are being sent.

Dr. Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary of preparedness and response for the US Department of Health and Human Services, described to a US Senate committee the type of experts he was hoping to send across the country.

“We’re looking to employ and deploy some of our national disaster medical system personnel as well as other federal health care personnel to assist at the Evergreen long-term treatment facility,” he said.

At the Life Care Center that county officials say was home to at least nine of the patients who came down with coronavirus, more than 50 residents and staff members were experiencing symptoms and were tested for the virus, King County health officer Jeffrey Duchin said Monday.

“Current residents and associates continue to be monitored closely, specifically for an elevated temperature, cough and/or shortness of breath,” officials said in a statement on the Life Care website. “Any resident displaying these symptoms is placed in isolation. Associates are screened prior to beginning work and upon leaving.”

A US Department of Homeland Security facility in King County was shut down Tuesday after officials learned an employee had visited a relative at Life Care, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said during a House hearing.