Eleven residents of Middletown have died from complications of COVID-19 and the mayor said all 11 people lived in nursing homes.
In a Facebook post on Thursday, Mayor Ben Florsheim said there had been a one-day spike in COVID-19 deaths, from seven on Tuesday afternoon to 11 by Wednesday.
“Over the past few days, I’ve had heartbreaking conversations with a number of residents whose loved ones are living in nursing homes and congregate care facilities, which have turned into hotspots for viral spread across the state and country. Middletown, sadly, has not been an exception,” Florsheim said in his social media post.
The mayor said the city is doing everything it can to send personal protective equipment to the facilities, coordinate with the hospital and facilitate communication with families. He said he brought the issue up on a call with state officials and mayors
He said the lack of available tests has proven to be a major problem for nursing homes, many residents and family members are being told that even if they get a test they won’t know the result for days and “the false-negative rate has been unacceptably high.”
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However, Abbott Labs has developed a quick-response test that and the state department of health has a new shipment of those tests that it is sending out to nursing homes this week, he said.
Middletown has had 163 confirmed cases of coronavirus.
