MONROE — An employee at Pleasant View Nursing Home tested positive for COVID-19 during a round of facility-wide staff testing on June 23.
The employee works on the second floor, had no symptoms at the time of testing and will be at home in isolation until released by public health authorities, said Cindy Rice, director of nursing at the county-owned nursing home.
Six other employees who had direct contact with the infected employee will be quarantined for 14 days as a precaution.
All second-floor residents were then tested June 26. All tests came back negative.
“We’re happy about that,” Rice said.
Pleasant View has recently adopted a practice of frequent facility-wide testing as a precaution.
The increased testing is in response to the rise in infections in the greater community, particularly among young people who are asymptomatic, Rice said.
“We’re just trying to be forthright and test intermittently to make sure we’re all good. ... There’s more in the community and a lot of them are asymptomatic so we just want to be careful,” she said.
The nursing home remains closed to visitors to protect residents from possible exposure to the coronavirus.
4 workplace outbreaks reported
As of June 29, 14 employees had tested positive in a COVID-19 outbreak at Mexican Cheese Producers in Darlington.
The National Guard tested about 100 employees at the cheese plant June 23, according to Lafayette County Health Department Director Elizabeth Townsend. About 40 additional employees sought testing at health care providers prior to the facility-wide National Guard testing event.
Some of the 14 employees who tested positive reside in surrounding counties, Townsend said. Mexican Cheese Producers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The state Department of Health Services also recently reported a second workplace outbreak in Lafayette County. Townsend said test results are still pending from that facility-wide testing investigation. She had no other information to release.
Green County has also had two workplace outbreaks that triggered facility-wide testing. The first, in late April, was at Wisconsin Cheese Group in Monroe and is no longer considered active.
RoAnn Warden, director of Green County Public Health, said an outbreak was also identified in a “very small” workplace in the county in early June.
Two people tested positive, the threshold to trigger a facility-wide investigation. Public health nurses tested everyone else in the workplace “and they all came back negative,” she said.
As of June 29, Green County had eight active cases countywide. None of the eight are hospitalized, according to Green County Public Health. Overall, 79 Green County residents have recovered from confirmed COVID-19 infections and one has died.
Lafayette County reported 25 active cases as of June 28, reflecting a recent surge in new cases. The county’s COVID-19 activity level is rated at “high,” according to a new state data dashboard.
‘Mask Up Green County’
Green County Public Health is launching a “Mask Up Green County” campaign in early July with any groups, businesses or other stakeholders willing to help promote the importance of wearing a mask to slow the spread of COVID-19, Warden said.
The need for an initiative to promote mask-wearing was identified during the weekly meetings of the Green County Emergency Operations Center, a county-run collaboration of local leaders and officials.
Warden added that it’s also a response to public concern. Members of the public are contacting her office to express concerns that they aren’t seeing other people wearing masks out in public in enclosed spaces like stores.
“They’re concerned that people aren’t wearing masks,” Warden said.
Goals of “Mask Up Green County” include education, outreach and making masks accessible to residents.