Two more residents of Willow Crest in Sandwich dead from COVID-19, death toll rises to 22 in county

SANDWICH – The death toll at Willow Crest Nursing Pavilion rose Tuesday by two, as public health officials announced two residents, a woman in her 90s and a woman in her 80s, died due to complications from the novel coronavirus.

The death toll at Willow Crest climbed to 3 and countywide to 22 Tuesday. One additional resident also tested positive for COVID-19. The outbreak at the nursing pavilion is at 38, with 13 staff who have contracted the viral respiratory disease and 25 residents.

The county’s other three longterm care facilities with outbreaks may be on the up and up, however, as no new cases have been identified in any in July to date.

Lisa Gonzalez, public health administrator for the DeKalb County Health Department, said the two cases reported as new at Pine Acres Rehab and Living Center last week – the site of DeKalb’s deadliest outbreak, with 12 of the 20 deaths in the county residents of the facility and 80 cases reported – were actually old cases just delayed.

County health departments track cases based on the reporting system: Testing sites across the state are mandated to report cases linked to a residents' address to the Illinois Department of Public Health who then report them to respective local health departments, which then gets announced to the public.

Gonzalez said the two announced Friday were already identified by the state, just not in the local health department system until recently.

Pine Acres, 1212 S. Second St., battled a severe COVID-19 outbreak among its residents (55 cases) and staff (25 cases) beginning May 28. New cases have not been identified since June 19 however, Gonzalez confirmed.

Up until now, it's been unknown whether the 430 fully recovered cases in the county included those linked to long-term care facilities, since health departments do not track individual cases and their recoveries, just recovery data by the gross.

Gonzalez said moving forward, the DeKalb County Health Department is tracking those recoveries and are hopeful some may be removed from the list soon.

"Two of the four we think are going to be moving out of outbreak mode," she said. "We're just waiting on a few more results to come in to be sure that's the case. So if that happens you'll see them drop off our daily list."

Gonzalez said a facility must go at least 28 days without any new reported cases to be removed from the outbreak designation.

Pine Acres, the largest long-term care outbreak in the county, has reported 55 cases in residents, 25 in staff and 12 deaths, although no new activity since late June.

DeKalb County Rehab and Nursing Center reported three cases in staff June 3, and none since. Bethany Rehabilitation and Health Care Center reported two cases in employees June 8, and none since.