The owner of a Willsboro assisted living facility now facing a deadly coronavirus outbreak says he doesn’t know how the virus entered the facility. He said i
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The gym of the former Willsboro school was converted into a dining hall for Champlain Valley Senior Community â complete with holdover elements such as a scoreboard and wooden bleachers â as seen in June 2013. (Enterprise photo â Chris Knight) Two residents of a senior home in Willsboro have died after contracting COVID-19, and three other Essex County residents also died this week of the disease. There is a coronavirus outbreak at the Champlain Valley Senior Community. At least 30 people connected to the assisted living facility have tested positive, according to Willsboro town Supervisor and Essex County Board of Supervisors Chairman Shaun Gillilland.
Franklin County Public Health reported a spike in COVID-19 cases on Friday. Thirty-nine new cases of COVID-19 were identified between Thursday and Friday. That is abnormally high for this rural county, which has recently reported around 20 new cases each day. The new cases bring the total number of active cases countywide to 195. The county reported a 6.04% test positivity rate on Friday and a 6.36% seven-day average test positivity rate. Franklin County Manager Donna Kissane attributed the new cases to clusters in prisons, pre-surgery tests and community spread, meaning people who test positive without a known exposure to another positive case. “Adhering to the best practices in the best defense to reduce the spread of the virus,” she wrote in her daily email.
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Dr. Tony Holtzman speaks about the federal government response to the coronavirus pandemic during a virtual presentation hosted by Historic Saranac Lake on Tuesday.
(Enterprise photo â Elizabeth Izzo) SARANAC LAKE As he watched the coronavirus spread throughout the United States, with this country surpassing all others in the number of cases reported, Dr. Tony Holtzman sought to answer a question. “How can it be that the wealthiest country in the world, and among the most technologically advanced countries in the world, fared so badly?” asked the emeritus professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University and author of Adirondack historical fiction.
eizzo@adirondackdailyenterprise.com The workload facing local hospitals and county health departments is on track to becoming unsustainable. Health care officials are imploring residents to take precautions to curb the spread before that happens. In a virtual press conference on Friday, multiple doctors from University of Vermont Health Network hospitals and public health directors from around Clinton, Essex and Franklin counties warned that the local COVID-19 caseload was beginning to stress the operations of both hospitals and county health departments. This comes at a time when rural hospitals have already faced significant financial challenges. Before the pandemic, some North Country hospitals were merging and downsizing. Last spring, those financial challenges were compounded when hospitals were directed to cancel elective surgeries for several weeks, cutting off a vital revenue-generator for rural health care facilities that care for a relatively large number of patients