AUSTIN (KXAN) — The state of Texas is partnering with Omnicare, a CVS Health company, to bring COVID-19 testing to staff and residents of Texas nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
Gov. Greg Abbott announced the partnership on Friday, saying that the testing — which will be on-site and provide same-day results — will help protect vulnerable Texans from the disease caused by coronavirus.
The state says that test sites will help enable its goal of processing up to 100,000 tests in the first month of operation.
Testing in assisted living facilities began on Thursday and Omnicare says it will begin testing in nursing homes next week.
On Thursday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released data showing that Texas leads the U.S. in numbers of nursing homes that have failed to submit COVID-19 data.
According to CMS, 76 out of Texas’ 1,218 nursing homes did not submit data.
This is despite the fact that nursing homes in Texas have reported over 1,000 COVID-19-related deaths among residents and over 7,000 cases at 62% of facilities in the state, according to the Health and Human Services Commission.
On July 27, the Texas Health & Human Services Commission finally released COVID-19 case counts for individual nursing homes and assisted living facilities throughout Texas. KXAN investigators have mapped that data for Central Texas, and we will update the map’s interactive information weekly for the duration of the pandemic.Read more about this data.
