BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts has paused a program to test residents of nursing homes and long-term health care centers for the coronavirus after problems with the collection of samples, Secretary of Health and Human Services Marylou Sudders said.
The elderly are particularly susceptible, and more than half the state’s fatalities from the virus were nursing home residents, according to figures from the state Department of Public Health.
The state announced this month that nursing homes could order test kits to be delivered and then administered by trained personnel.
But after sending out 14,000 tests, only 4,000 were returned, and many were unlabeled or in leaking tubes, Sudders told The Boston Globe on Tuesday.
The state will continue to offer mobile testing at nursing homes through the National Guard while officials work to solve the problems with the test kit program.
Nearly 240 trainees at the Massachusetts State Police Academy have been sent home to self-quarantine for 14 days and continue their studies online after two tested positive for the virus, authorities said.
All the trainees will be tested, according to a statement Tuesday from state police spokesman David Procopio, even though not all of them had contact with the two who tested positive.
The trainees who tested positive, one man and one woman, are the first recruits or staff at the New Braintree academy to test positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, he said.
The training class is still on track to graduate May 6, five weeks earlier than originally planned, because of the pandemic, the agency said.