Six employees at the Soldiers' Home in Holyoke who had previously been cleared to return to work after recovering from COVID-19 tested positive for the virus for a second time this week, officials said.
All six employees tested positive for the virus months ago when the outbreak began. Each was considered "clinically recovered," Brooke Karanovich, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Executive Office for Health and Human Services, told Masslive.com.
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None was showing symptoms prior to the most recent positive test result and they were sent home "out of an abundance of caution," she said.
A resident of the veterans' care facility who had recovered from COVID-19, but started showing symptoms again, tested positive for a second time earlier this week. A second test on that resident given Wednesday came back negative.
The virus is blamed for the deaths of 76 veterans at the home, one of the worst outbreaks at a long-term care facility in the country.