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The mayor of Joliet in Illinois demanded Friday a state probe into 23 coronavirus deaths at a nursing home.
The deaths occurred at Symphony of Joliet nursing home, and according to reports. no other nursing home in Illinois is believed to have a higher number of fatalities from COVID-19.
“Right now I think this is a matter for health officials to get involved and start untangling the mess of what happened inside that nursing home,” Mayor Bob O'Dekirk told a news conference.
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Twenty-three deaths from the coronavirus have been reported at Symphony of Joliet nursing home in Joliet, Illinois. (Google Earth)
He said he had passed on to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office “concerning stories” he had received from paramedics describing conditions they said they found inside the home.
“We don’t have answers right now but we going to have the answers and certainly Joliet families, the people who lost loved ones in there, have a right to get answers,” O’Dekirk said.
At the news conference, Joliet Interim Fire Chief Greg Blaskey said that in the past five weeks the fire department EMTs had responded to 31 calls at Symphony.
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He said 10 of the calls were for a person not breathing and unresponsive, seven were for a person having difficulty breathing and four were for a person in cardiac arrest.
The nursing home is down to 16 residents, all of whom have tested positive for the virus, Mysuburbanlife.com reported Thursday.
“All negative patients have moved out of the nursing home,” Symphony spokeswoman Lauryn Allison told the news outlet. “So the patients that are being treated there are being treated by dedicated health care workers who are working only with those patients.”
On April 7, the nursing home confirmed three deaths—two residents and an employee, according to the news outlet.
“Symphony Joliet is unfortunately one of many healthcare centers around the world that has been hit hard by COVID-19.” Symphony CEO David Hartman said in a letter to O’Dekirk that was sent Friday afternoon. “Sadly, our patients and staff at Symphony of Joliet are not immune to this global pandemic.”
“We have lost an unbearable number of residents and staff, and we are grieving these heartbreaking losses as their friends, colleagues and caregivers,” Hartman said.
llinois Department of Public Health has reported 296 deaths from COVID-19 at 125 nursing homes and assisted living centers across the state.
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There have been 1,072 COVID-19 deaths in Illinois.
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