By Bradley Bermont | Pasadena Star-News | Updated April 21, 2020
Five more Pasadena residents with COVID-19 died this weekend, Pasadena officials said on Monday, April 20, taking the city’s death toll to 25.
All of the fatalities have involved employees or residents of long-term care facilities, such as nursing homes or assisted care facilities.
“I want to express my deepest condolences for those who have lost loved ones to COVID-19,” said Dr. Ying-Ying Goh, director of Pasadena’s Public Health Department.
Pasadena has now seen more coronavirus-related deaths than Long Beach, which also has its own health department, even though Long Beach has more than three times the population of Pasadena and almost double the number of total coronavirus cases.
Long Beach had reported 24 deaths and 464 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of Monday.
Pasadena, meanwhile, reported its single largest increase in coronavirus caseloads on Monday when 34 additional residents were confirmed to have been infected with the virus, sending the city’s total number of patients to 249.
“This is partly from an increase and testing and likely reflects an upward trend of actual cases,” Goh said.
While Pasadena does not report new cases on weekends — and Mondays typically see larger leaps because the report includes cases confirmed on Friday, Saturday and Sunday — this past weekend’s 34 cases were more than any previous weekend report. The next biggest weekend increase was the 29 cases announced last Monday, April 13.
In a Saturday update of its coronavirus dashboard, city officials revealed new details regarding some of the cases reported as of Thursday evening. At the time, Pasadena had 215 total cases. Of those…
- One case involved someone under the age of 18.
- Three cases involved residents between the ages of 18 and 35.
- Two cases involved residents between the ages of 51 and 64.
- 11 cases involved residents 65-years-old and up.
Additionally, over the weekend, the city reported new investigations into one nursing home, GEM Transitional Care Center, which has at least one confirmed case of the virus.
According to data released by the state’s Department of Public Health, which oversees every skilled nursing facility in California, the case or cases at GEM Transitional involves at least one resident, but no staff members.
In the state’s data — which revealed precise numbers of cases at various facilities with more than 10 already — Pasadena’s Brighton Care Center was reported to have 63 cases of the virus spread between staff and residents, significantly more than most nursing homes in Los Angeles County.
The Rose Garden Healthcare Center, also based in Pasadena, reported 24 cases of coronavirus split between staff and residents.
Nine Pasadena nursing homes were included in the state’s data, but it’s unclear how many cases each has — all reported 10 or fewer. A facility must report 11 or more cases for the state to list the precise number.
Those facilities include:
- Camellia Gardens Care Center, both staff and residents have cases.
- Foothill Heights Care Center, only residents.
- Golden Cross Health Care, only staff.
- Huntington Post Acute (Pasadena Meadows Nursing Center), both staff and residents.
- Pasadena Park Healthcare and Wellness Center, only staff.
- The Californian (Pasadena Convalescent Hospital), only residents.
One of these facilities, Pasadena Park Healthcare and Wellness, has not been previously reported in any city reports.
When asked about the discrepancy, city spokeswoman Lisa Derderian said local health officials didn’t have a record of it, “but we’re looking into it.”
The data is not reported by the facilities themselves, but from the labs that are doing the actual testing.
Two other facilities, Pasadena Grove Health Center and Saint Vincent Healthcare, are listed on Pasadena’s dashboard, but neither were included in the state’s data.
There have been ongoing issues with Pasadena’s reporting on nursing homes and assisted living facilities, including listing facilities with no confirmed cases and misreporting the timing of active cases with at least one facility.
In Los Angeles County on Monday, the deaths of another 17 people from complications related to the novel coronavirus were reported. It’s among the county’s lowest daily death tallies since the pandemic erupted.
The toll was a relief after a particularly grim weekend, when the deaths of more than 100 people were reported.
Including Pasadena’s latest figures, there are more than 13,800 confirmed cases of the virus across the county.
Staff writer David Rosenfeld contributed to this report.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been corrected. One nursing home listed in the state’s data, Duarte-based Monte Vista Healthcare Center, was erroneously identified as a Pasadena-based facility that was unreported by the city. In fact, it was confused for a similarly named facility in the city, Monte Vista Grove Homes, which has never had a confirmed case of coronavirus reported in state or city databases.