‘He just went downhill very fast.’ NC rest home resident dies after coronavirus outbreak
On Friday night, Elizabeth Glascock watched her father die while looking through a sliding glass door into a negative-pressure room at the Southampton Memorial Hospital in Franklin, Virginia.
She, her mom and a stepsister couldn’t go in the room. Two days earlier, James Glascock, 65, had tested positive for the coronavirus.
Staff gave her a walkie-talkie so that she could talk to her father, a retired US Department of Agriculture county executive director who loved to golf, fish and hunt and played a mean game of chess. But he was sedated and on a ventilator, so he couldn’t respond.
“I told him the normal stuff, that I loved him, and I was right here even though he couldn’t physically feel me,” she said. “They said when I spoke, his heart rate fluctuated, so maybe he heard me.”
Her father had come to the Southampton hospital on March 22 with stomach pain — which led to surgery to remove his appendix — after spending 10 days in the Pine Forest Rest Home at the tiny North Carolina community of Potecasi in Northampton County. And she did a double-take when she read in The News & Observer on Sunday that none of the 21 residents and three staff who tested positive for the virus last week were doing poorly.
“I don’t feel like the facts are adding up, because they didn’t even mention that someone passed away from the nursing home,” Elizabeth said.
Andy Smith is the Northampton County health director who reported the outbreak on Saturday and then provided more details to the N&O on Sunday. He said Monday that he couldn’t speak about patients by name, but he did confirm one left Pine Forest for a hospital and tested positive after emergency surgery.
Smith said he did not know the fate of the resident who had gone to that hospital.
“I have not been told,” he said. “That is really out of my jurisdiction because he was out of the state at that time.”
Virginia reports coronavirus-related death
On Saturday, the Virginia Department of Health reported its first coronavirus-related death in the region that includes Southampton County. State death records show that death occurred in that county.
Two days earlier the state reported the first case in Southampton County. It was a man in his 60s who came from an assisted-living facility in Northampton County and “who had been transported to a local hospital for an unrelated medical emergency.”
Glascock’s positive test for the virus means three health-care facilities have to run down who he came in contact with. Before arriving at Pine Forest on March 12, Glascock had been recuperating from heart and lung issues at Courtland Health & Rehabilitation Center in Courtland, Virgina, his daughter said.
Will Drewery, a spokesman for the Virginia health department, said he could not speak to the specifics of Glascock’s case.
“But I can tell you in my state we are in constant contact with our health care facilities to make sure they have the proper measures in place to take care of their residents and staff,” he said.
A spokeswoman for Southampton hospital said patient privacy laws prevented officials from commenting. Representatives at the Courtland rehabilitation center could not immediately be reached.
It troubles Elizabeth that her father wasn’t tested for the virus until he went to the hospital, and after the surgery. She said a doctor at the hospital had become aware of the Pine Forest outbreak by then.
She said she was unaware if Pine Forest had tried to inform her or other family members of the outbreak. Pine Forest’s administrator, Brooke Jenkins, didn’t immediately return a phone call from The News & Observer on Monday after numerous attempts to reach her on Sunday.
Elizabeth said she thinks a combination of factors caused her father’s death: infection from the appendicitis, his general health and then the virus.
Home’s history
Pine Forest has been previously cited for its infection-control practices.
On Sept. 19, an inspector found that staff were disposing of personal protective equipment in a way that could help dangerous pathogens spread.
Instead of taking off gowns, gloves and masks while still inside the room of a resident infected with the bacteria Clostridium difficile, staff was taking the equipment off in a medication room, the inspection report said.
Additionally, housekeeping staff had not been told how much bleach to use for infectious diseases, the report said. A worker told the inspector that she would “just add a little bleach.”
Coronavirus tests
Smith said testing began at Pine Forest after another resident had come down a mild fever and tested positive at a local hospital. The results of that test were known March 22.
He said that resident and a staffer tested shortly afterward have not developed the disease since then, and can be considered recovered. The rest who tested positive are either showing no signs or mild symptoms.
“Everybody else is doing well,” he said. “And we have really tried to be informative and proactive.”
Elizabeth said her father retired from the USDA about 15 years ago. He worked in Southampton County, where he grew up, and retired early because the job became too stressful. He began substitute teaching in the county’s schools, and volunteered in the local Lions and Ruritan clubs.
Glascock started having health issues last fall, and was admitted to Southampton in November. He spent time in two other hospitals before being well enough to go to the rehabilitation center.
Elizabeth, 23, who lives in Murfreesboro, said he was determined to fully recover. By the time he moved to Pine Forest he was using a walker and could dress himself. He was aiming for self-sufficiency.
“He said, ‘I’m going to get out of here and get my own apartment,’” Elizabeth said. “But once all this happened, he just went downhill very fast.
“It just kind of sucks because he went through so much.”
This story was originally published March 30, 2020 at 4:42 PM.