HOLYOKE, MASS. (WHDH) - The Holyoke Soldiers’ Home has suspended visitation until further notice after a resident at the facility tested positive for COVID-19, months after an outbreak claimed the lives of 76 people, officials announced Tuesday.
A veteran resident who was clinically recovered from COVID-19 started showing symptoms of the virus again on Monday, according to the state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services. The veteran was taken to an area hospital for treatment, where they later tested positive for the virus.
“The Home has been implementing protocols for clinically recovered individuals, who may test positive even after they are clinically recovered,” an EOHHS spokesperson said in a statement. “The Home is immediately taking necessary precautions and is performing full-house testing with support from the Massachusetts National Guard, and temporarily suspending all visitation.”
A scathing independent investigation identified “substantial errors and failures by the Home’s leadership that likely contributed to the death toll during the outbreak.”
The most substantial error made by the Home’s leadership team came on March 27, when they decided to move all veterans from one of the two locked dementia units into the other locked dementia unit, where they would be crowded in with the veterans already living there, investigators said.
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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