The Illinois Veterans Home at Quincy has seen a wave of coronavirus cases in recent weeks, with nine residents and 12 staff members testing positive for COVID-19, the state’s veterans department reports.
They’re among three dozen residents and workers at three of the state’s five veterans homes who have caught the virus as Illinois suffers a late-summer bump in reported infections.
Other cases have been reported at the veterans homes in Lasalle and Manteno.
“Compared to just a few weeks ago, I had maybe one person in the entire campus with COVID, and now we're somewhere in the neighborhood, I believe, of 20,” said Chuck Newton, the Quincy facility’s administrator. “It just kind of goes up and down. There has been a surge over the summer nationally, and it's just gone up.”
State health department tracking at the Quincy sewage treatment plant shows the levels of the virus in the community’s wastewater have increased since early summer. The tracking shows levels at a concentration last seen during winter holidays in 2023.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists Illinois as one of 14 states in which coronavirus epidemic is “growing.”
Most cases have been mild and confined to the memory care unit at the Quincy veterans home, which houses around 300 veterans and their spouses in total, Newton said.
Officials said the Illinois facilities are following guidelines for infection control in long-term care centers. That includes encouraging residents to stay in their rooms, social distancing and increased disinfecting of the facility.
When the Quincy home is in “outbreak status,” health workers and visitors are required to wear masks when interacting with patients, Newton said.
The Quincy facility provides care for residents with minimal medical requirements as well as people who require memory care and other skilled treatment.
The coronavirus is not as dangerous as it was a few years ago, said Dr. Shephali Wulff, an infectious disease specialist in St. Charles, but it can still spread quickly, particularly in confined places where people live close together.
Because symptoms are milder than in past years, the virus can be spread more unwittingly, said Wulff, also vice president of quality and safety at SSM Health.
“People aren't testing today at this with the same rigor that they were at the beginning of the pandemic,” she said. “And so it's quite possible that people are walking around with COVID and don't know they have it. When you're looking at the kind of these group settings, and you have people that are in and out, there certainly could be people coming into those facilities who have COVID and then it will spread really quickly.”
That’s what happened nearly a decade ago, when a Legionnaires outbreak at the Quincy home sickened dozens and killed at least 13 people.
Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs officials said quick testing minimized the spread of the coronavirus throughout the facilities.
“I think people really feel that it's kind of done its course and gone away,” Newton said. “But it can still rear its ugly head and it does. But it's more or less in very mild symptoms.”
The Veterans' Home at Quincy is currently undergoing a $230 million renovation that will improve and replace many of its aging buildings and provide upgraded amenities to residents.
