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.
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.
