CDC weighing providing coronavirus vaccines to senior living communities first

Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christoforous and John Moore, CEO of senior living facility Atria, discuss the pandemic's impact to senior living communities.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: With COVID-19 infection rates surging across the country, senior-living providers are once again tightening restrictions. Atria Senior Living has consistently emphasized the importance of COVID-19 testing as a cornerstone of its strategy.

Joining me now is CEO of Atria John Moore. John, good to have you with us. Just to paint the picture for folks who aren't familiar with your facilities, you have over 200 communities in the Northeast. That means over 20,000 residents, more than 14,000 employees. Those are a lot of people to be testing. How are you doing so far?

JOHN MOORE: So it's actually-- yeah, we're spread across the country. We're in 26 states. Heavy concentrations in the Northeast between New York and Boston and also in California, and then we're also in just about all the big markets across the country. So it's even more complicated than that to put together a testing program that can go anywhere.

We were very fortunate mid-April to have been introduced to somebody at Mayo Clinic Labs. We thought that we were going to do a testing program then, a baseline test of all of our employees and then a few more. We thought it would be 15,000 to 18,000 tests. And Mayo Clinic Labs said they could support us. And, you know, here we are several months later, and I think we're over 160,000 tests. We'll do 12,000 tests this week.

And we've been able to-- you know, the more we use testing-- and we were pretty early in the testing game. So mid-April, testing was largely unavailable in scale. One of the reasons, you know, that Mayo got excited about working with us is that, you know, we wanted to do full asymptomatic testing, testing of everybody coming to work. And through that, we identified over 100 asymptomatic positives. We were able to screen them out and let them heal without exposing other people.

The result is, you know, our disease curve, you know, we think has looked-- even taking care of frail seniors, our disease curve has looked-- has a better shape since then than if you look at what the disease curves look like in the markets that we're in.

Since then-- you know, and once we started to understand the benefits of testing, states began to require lots of testing. Particularly New York still require, you know, testing once a week of all staff. But we started to overlay other programs.

So anytime there is a positive result returned, either through our testing or through any testing that a resident may have at a doctor or a staff member may have, outside the community we immediately trace and we'll do testing around that test. All new hires are tested. All the move-ins are tested. Move-ins are double tested. Residents that return from a medical setting are tested as well.

And it's having the ability to have a partner like Mayo with, you know, go-anywhere testing-- there's a network of 200 carriers that supports our testing program. And again, we're-- at this point, we're doing this week, you know, we will be doing 2,000 tests a day over six days.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: John--

- So it's a pretty-- become a pretty big endeavor.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: That's for sure. And I know that the vaccine they tell us is on the way, and the CDC has said that front-line workers and those in nursing homes would be among the first to get the vaccine. I know you're not a nursing home. You actually make the distinction you're a senior-living facility, so there is a difference there. But have you heard from officials? Where would your facilities, your residents sort of be in the order of people receiving the vaccine when it is finally available?

JOHN MOORE: Well, we're watching that closely, as you could imagine. The very good news is yesterday the CDC-- the committee that gives guidance to the states about what they suggest people should do with the vaccines have voted nearly unanimously to include senior-housing residents in phase 1A. So as you know, there are various-- there are several phases identified. Phase 1A is for front-line health-care workers. Our staff was already clearly in phase 1A. Then there's phase 1B and phase 1C.

So they changed their guidance yesterday to include senior-- assisted-living residents in phase 1A. They also included a phase 1C that would pick up all other frail seniors even living at home. So there was quite a move yesterday to add seniors that are exposed and at higher risk to the vaccine programs.

We still have to wait for what states decide to do. And, you know, there's some-- there was some late-breaking news. It was as, you know, I was getting ready to talk with you. I understand there's a press conference going on in New York about what they think they're going to do with the vaccine. But we have to then-- we have to now wait-- you know, we're told that usually the states will take CDC's recommendation, you know, but they don't have to. So we have to wait for that.

You know, the big dates, I think as you know, that we are watching, that everybody's watching-- you know, the EUA hopefully for Pfizer comes on December 10 and for Moderna on the 17th, and hopefully things can start rolling after that. I mean, we fully expect, you know, front-line staff at hospitals to be absolutely the priority, and that's also good for our residents because our residents are consumers of health care, and one of the ways that we've seen them get exposed is, you know, exposure to health-care setting. So I think that's a key thing for everybody.

So the vaccine is exciting.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: John?

JOHN MOORE: Yeah?

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: We just got past--

JOHN MOORE: I'm sorry.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: --Thanksgiving. That's OK. I just wanted to get one more question in here to you that, you know, we've got now the Christmas holiday, Hanukkah holiday upon us, the new year. How are you telling families and staff and residents to do this and to stay healthy?

JOHN MOORE: Well, for Thanksgiving, you know, we encourage residents not to go out. You know, we tried to talk about-- you know, we provide as much help as we can-- you know, virtual connections with family members. You know, basically, you know, this may be a year that we need to be thankful. You know, we need to be thankful for a lot of things every day, you know, but there's no reason why we can't have Thanksgiving in January, February, or March. You know, it's one day. But just for everybody, you know, the smart thing to do is to stay safe.

For residents-- and we know that residents and families will want to get together in any event. And so we, you know, provide a mechanism if they do go out. We would quarantine them, and we would offer testing. We would offer to test them for a price for those tests, but just a vehicle to let people do as safely as we can-- as we can, you know, let them do what they need to do.

It's interesting. As Thanksgiving approached, we had-- you know, we thought, you know, a large group of residents would, you know, go home for Thanksgiving, and many of them decided with family members that the smart thing to do was to have a virtual connection, everybody to be safe, and let's get past this. You know, the vaccine's exciting news.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: [INAUDIBLE]

JOHN MOORE: You know, and that's a good thing.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Absolutely, and I'm glad to see that people didn't let their emotions overtake them and they tried to do the right thing. John Moore, CEO of Atria, thanks so much, and best of luck to you with all that testing.

JOHN MOORE: Thank you, and thanks for including this kind of conversation. It's very helpful.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Absolutely. It's an important conversation. Thank you.