WEDNESDAY, MAY 13, 2020 UPDATE — Twenty-one additional residents at Gulf Shore Care Center in Pinellas Park who tested positive for COVID-19 were transferred to area hospitals Wednesday, according to an email sent to county commissioners.

The patients' conditions are for the moment stable.

"They are, according to the Department of Health, Covid positive," said Pinellas County EMS and Fire Director Craig Hare. "But at this point they are asymptomatic so they are stable."

The first death from Gulf Coast Care Center occurred Monday when a 78-year-old woman with pre-existing conditions passed away due to COVID-19. It was also on Monday that five COVID-19 patients were transferred to area hospitals.

ORIGINAL STORY

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- According to Pinellas County officials, 15 COVID-19 positive patients were transported from St. Petersburg Nursing and Rehabilitation Center and Gulf Shore Care Center in Pinellas Park Monday.

"St. Pete deeply cares about its residents and seeks to use every available avenue to help protect their health, safety, and welfare," Ron Tencza, executive director of the St. Petersburg facility, said in a statement. "We have transferred some suspected positive residents to the area hospital and transferred some residents last evening under the guidance and direction of the Florida Department of Health to another facility." 

Gulf Shore also issued a statement, saying in part that aside from the patients who were hospitalized, it has identified no new in-house cases.

"We have highly trained and professional staff and are accustomed to achieving high quality outcomes. That said, the new COVID virus does not discriminate and has ravaged communal living environments throughout much of the United States," read part of the statement from the care team at Gulf Shore.

According to information from Pinellas County, ten of the positive cases are from St. Petersburg and the other five are from Gulf Shores. Two staff members at St. Petersburg are also COVID positive and are not currently at the facility.

"It's really a place that catches fire very quickly," Dr. Jay Wolfson, senior associate dean of the University of South Florida's Morsani College of Medicine and professor of public health, medicine, and pharmacy, said of nursing facilities. "Once there's one case, we found that it spreads very quickly through the lunch room, through staff members who happen to be visiting patients."

The White House strongly recommended to governors Monday that all staff and residents at long-term care facilities nationwide be tested in coming weeks. Wolfson said that's a good first step.

"These are very important places to test, to re-test over and over again, to test staff, to test staff's family sometimes, once you get a positive test," he said. "These are incredibly volatile places, and you have to test all of them and maintain vigilance and surveillance on them, which means you go back and test. Because, as you know, if you test today and get a negative, it doesn't mean that you'll be negative tomorrow or the next day."

Both St. Petersburg Nursing and Rehab and Gulf Shore said they'll continue to follow government and health agency guidelines going forward. The county said the health department and Agency for Health Care Administration are in the process of coordinating additional testing at those facilities.