Fairfield County City Begins Testing For Nursing Home Workers

“This testing is part of the City’s larger initiative to provide testing for essential workers on the frontlines fighting this virus,” Mayor David Martin said announcing the testing on Thursday, April 23.

“Workers at these institutions take care of the most vulnerable residents in our community. This expansion of testing will not only help protect these workers and their families, it will also help protect the residents and their families.”

Similar to the City’s initiative to test emergency response providers, healthcare workers will receive nasopharyngeal tests (“nasal swabs”) provided by DOCS Urgent Care and Murphy Medical Associates. These tests will be processed by Quest Diagnostics and Sema4 Labs. Results will be returned to workers within 48 hours. Each institution will manage the testing of its own employees and provide results to the City of Stamford.

Earlier in the week, Mayor Martin announced over 300 of Stamford’s emergency response providers had been tested for COVID-19. The City began testing all asymptomatic emergency response providers last week and continued testing over the weekend, including Stamford’s Police Department, Fire Department, Stamford Emergency Medical Services, 911 Communications and Department of Health nurses at testing sites.

“One of the very best ways to stop the spread of this virus is to identify individuals who are spreading it without showing symptoms,” said Martin. 

Out of the 320 tests conducted as of Monday, April 20, 206 tests results have been returned — 6 have tested positive (3 percent), while 200 have tested negative (97 percent), according to the City of Stamford in a daily report.

Residents over the age of 70 make up approximately 15 percent of all reported positive cases of COVID-19 in Stamford, but makeup roughly 78 percent of COVID-19-related deaths. 

Stamford has over 90 patients in these (nursing homes) with a positive case of COVID-19 while the state’s total is over 1,713 patients across Connecticut, the city reported on Thursday, April 23.

All the nursing homes are privately owned so the city does not directly oversee how testing is conducted, however, Stamford is supplying each institution to test their entire workforce, said Arthur Augustyn, spokesperson for the mayor's office.

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