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10 residents at a Kansas nursing home died after all 62 living there tested positive for COVID-19

Nursing home
A patient in an assisted-living facility in Massachusetts on August 26. Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Ten residents at a nursing home in Norton, Kansas, have died from COVID-19 after all 62 residents at the facility tested positive for the coronavirus, the county's health department announced.

According to a report from CBS News, the Norton County Health Department confirmed the diagnoses at the Andbe Home in Norton on Monday.

Staff members at the facility have also tested positive for the virus, according to the report, though the extent of the outbreak among the staff was not disclosed.

According to local officials, one person is hospitalized and the remaining 51 are being treated at the facility. Officials didn't specify whether any of the residents still in the facility were experiencing any COVID-19 symptoms, CBS News reported.

The Norton County Health Department did not immediately return Insider's request for comment on Tuesday.

As CBS News noted, officials in Norton County last week had also reported an outbreak — 100 cases in a two-week period — at a local state prison. Norton County has seen one of the largest proportional increases of COVID-19 cases in Kansas over the past two weeks, according to the report.

According to data analyzed by Johns Hopkins University, there have been at least 71,557 confirmed COVID-19 infections in the state and at least 870 deaths. Over the past week, more than 19% of tests administered in Kansas have returned a positive result, an increase from the week prior.

Throughout the pandemic, nursing homes have been a hot spot for COVID-19 infections as facilities have struggled to stem the spread among their residents, which often include people most susceptible to severe cases of COVID-19.

On Monday, the American Health Care Association and the National Center for Assisted Living warned in a joint report that weekly nursing home cases rose in late September for the first time in nearly two months after new cases "dropped significantly" in August and during the beginning of September.

The report linked spread in nursing homes to increased spread within communities where facilities are located. On Monday, global cases of the novel coronavirus reached 40 million, doubling since cases reached 20 million during the second week of August.

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