HOLYOKE, MASS. (WHDH) - Six staff members at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home have tested positive for the coronavirus, officials announced Thursday.
Workers at the Home were tested this week after one veteran resident tested positive for COVID-19, prompting the facility to suspend visitations.
The six staff members had previously tested positive for the virus and were symptomatic months ago but they all recovered, a spokesperson for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services said.
Those staff members are now said to be asymptomatic. They were sent home out of an abundance of caution.
“The Home has been implementing protocols for clinically recovered individuals per the CDC, and will continue to take full precautions for any suspected positive resident,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “This week, the Home is requiring a second round of full house testing for all residents and staff.”
The new positive tests come months after an outbreak claimed the lives of 76 veterans.
A scathing independent investigation identified “substantial errors and failures by the Home’s leadership that likely contributed to the death toll during the outbreak.”
A $176 million class-action civil rights lawsuit has since been filed against the Home’s superintendent, Bennett Walsh, as well as other administrators.
Investigators said that Walsh was unfit to preside over the facility.
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