Coronavirus outbreak at Riverside nursing home leaves 30 sick

Riverside County announced Sunday that 30 patients of a skilled nursing facility, Extended Care Hospital of Riverside, tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

Some staff members also had tested positive, and officials were awaiting results from other patients and workers at the 90-plus-bed facility, public health officials said Sunday.

The facility was closed to new admissions, sick patients were being isolated, and staff were not being permitted to work elsewhere.

“This is a very serious situation and shows why we must all take serious steps to change our behavior, because these steps are intended to protect our most vulnerable,” Riverside County Supervisor Karen Spiegel said in a statement.

The county also said another person had died of the coronavirus and 134 had tested positive, bringing the county’s death toll to 19 and its total number of cases to 799.

Nursing homes and assisted-living centers across California continued to see significant increases in coronavirus cases, alarming officials who are trying to slow the spread.

The older populations of these facilities almost always have underlying health problems, making them particularly vulnerable to the virus. They often live in close quarters. Administrators have responded by banning visitors, confining patients to their rooms and scrambling to create sterile wings to treat residents who contract the disease.

Still, there have been outbreaks at facilities from Redondo Beach to Burlingame.

Twenty-seven people at a skilled nursing facility in the East Bay city of Orinda have tested positive for the coronavirus.