Employees at Absolut Care of Westfield are pictured this week during a recognition of National Nursing Home Week. Photo by Anthony Dolce

WESTFIELD — An employee at a local senior living facility is confirmed to have recently tested positive for the coronavirus.

A spokesman for Absolut Care of Westfield said the employee, who was not identified by name or where they worked within the facility, was put into quarantine in accordance with the New York State Department of Health after receiving a positive test for COVID-19.

The date of the positive test was also not released.

The spokesman, Jason Newman, said all residents within the facility, and their families, have been updated on the positive case. In addition, 32 staff who reportedly worked closely with the employee were tested by the Chautauqua County Department of Health immediately, “and were all confirmed negative,” Newman said.

Everyone at the Westfield location, residents and staff, were tested Thursday.

No one residing within a nursing home in Chautauqua County has tested positive for the virus, county Health Department officials have stated previously.

The same cannot be said for facilities across New York state. According to the Associated Press, of the nation’s more than 26,000 coronavirus deaths in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, a fifth of them — about 5,300 — are in New York.

Thomas Hopkins, administrator of Absolut Care of Westfield, confirmed Thursday that no resident within the facility has tested positive for COVID-19. “We don’t have a resident with COVID,” Hopkins said. “We have been doing very, very good.”

The county has seen some of the fewest confirmed cases in the state. To date there have been 44 cases, though only seven remain active, while four deaths have been reported in addition to 142 people in quarantine/isolation, 33 recoveries and 1,641 negative tests.

In the western part of the county, which includes Westfield, only two cases have been recorded.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has come under criticism for the handling of increased cases in nursing home, recently issued an executive order requiring facilities across the state to test staff for COVID-19 twice a week.

“We are working on the policy,” Newman said when asked of Cuomo’s executive order. “We will of course be in compliance with the governor’s mandate.”

State Sen. George Borrello, R-Sunset Bay, called on the governor Thursday to assist the state’s nursing homes in meeting the new requirement to implement twice-weekly COVID-19 testing of their employees. He noted that testing kit availability at that volume is not available in many regions of the state, and that most facilities do not have the resources needed to purchase tests at that scale.

“Everyone supports taking extra precautions to help protect our vulnerable nursing home residents and most facilities have been very diligent throughout this crisis in providing daily employee temperature screenings and health assessments,” Borrello said in a statement. “The governor’s executive order requiring nursing home employees to be tested twice a week is good in concept, but impossible for most facilities to execute without hands-on partnership from the state.”

Borrello said he has spoken to multiple nursing home administrators who have “spent the last week frantically making calls” to determine if accessing tests in large quantity is feasible.

“What they have discovered is that it’s not,” he said. “Even if the tests were available, these homes do not have the financial resources to absorb such a massive, unanticipated cost, particularly with the state’s recent cutbacks in Medicaid reimbursement rates.”