Residents in long-term care facilities had a significantly higher rate of reinfection than people in the general population, according to a new study.

The study in the journal The Lancet Regional Health–Americas analyzed nine months of testing data, just prior to the roll-out of vaccines in long-term care facilities, a period that allowed researchers to look at test results in the setting of natural exposure to the virus.

They identified that 2.6% of residents in Connecticut’s 212 nursing homes had one or more repeat positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR tests occurring as early as 90 days after an initial positive test. This percentage was significantly higher than other demographics, such as younger adults, or community-dwelling elderly.

Even more concerning, 12.6% of the elderly with a second positive test after 90 days died shortly after that repeat positive test. While genetic sequencing was not available, several lines of evidence supported that re-infection may have been responsible for the repeat positive tests, including the fact that 80% of those elderly had an intervening negative test.

A critical tool to contain outbreaks in nursing homes has been the use of surveillance testing for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. While tests were hard to come by in the early months of the pandemic, states such as Connecticut were able to conduct rapid and frequent comprehensive testing of nursing home residents by mid-May 2020. The sheer number of positive tests was sobering, but this allowed nursing homes, in collaboration with the Connecticut Department of Public Health (CT DPH) and the Yale School of Public Health to identify outbreaks, analyze data, and separate individuals who were infected, thereby limiting these potentially explosive outbreaks.

Read the full article about COVID in nursing homes at Futurity.