Gov. DeWine Announces New Congregate Care Unified Response Teams To Test Nursing Home Residents & Staff

Ohio nursing home residents and staff members will begin to be tested this week.

(Columbus, Oh.) - Governor DeWine has announced a plan to further assist those living and working in nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The new Congregate Care Unified Response Teams will allow nursing homes to test residents and staff members across the state of Ohio. 

"Nursing facilities have been aggressive regarding testing and managing COVID-19 outbreaks on their own, but this effort will provide them with additional resources," said Governor DeWine. "As we continue to ramp up our testing in Ohio, we must deploy our resources in a way that will save the most lives."

Starting this week, the Congregate Care Unified Response Teams will test residents and staff within nursing homes on "two parallel paths."

Governor DeWine stated that these paths will include:

• All staff in all Ohio nursing facilities will be tested to help nursing home administrators gauge the status of the virus in their facilities and help isolate the virus to stop it from infecting their community.
• Testing will be conducted in facilities where residents or workers have confirmed or assumed positive cases. Testing will be conducted on all staff, and the testing of residents will be based on a clinically-driven strategy that targets those who have likely been exposed to COVID-19.  By testing residents based on their potential interaction with a confirmed COVID-19 case, the nursing facility will be better equipped to isolate the virus and contain spread within the facility.

Additionally, the teams will begin the testing of all residents and staff members in the Ohio’s eight developmental centers to try to mitigate the spread of coronavirus in congregate care settings.

These response teams will include medically-trained members of the Ohio National Guard.