{"id":50074,"date":"2020-12-02T18:48:06","date_gmt":"2020-12-03T01:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/covid-19-outbreak-reported-at-hilltop-house\/"},"modified":"2020-12-03T01:48:06","modified_gmt":"2020-12-03T01:48:06","slug":"covid-19-outbreak-reported-at-hilltop-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/covid-19-outbreak-reported-at-hilltop-house\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19 outbreak reported at Hilltop House"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"An
An outbreak of COVID-19 cases has caused a host of issues at Hilltop House, a community corrections facility in Durango.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Hilltop House community corrections center in Durango has at least 15 residents and four staff members who have tested positive for COVID-19, causing a host of other issues associated with the virus, according to San Juan Basin Public Health.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment released the numbers in its weekly Wednesday update of new COVID-19 outbreaks across the state. According to state guidelines, an outbreak is defined as two or more cases in a 14-day period.<\/p>\n

Sally Frey, executive director of Hilltop House, did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Brian Devine with SJBPH said the health department also received and verified a complaint made against Hilltop House on Nov. 27 about inadequate infection-control practices at the community corrections center.<\/p>\n

The complaint reads: \u201cI\u2019d like to report a business (Hilltop House) for allowing sick individuals with fevers and coughs to sit in a waiting room full of other people. I have witnessed this weekly for the past three weeks. Today the staff took a temperature of a individual three times and said it was over 100 but go sit down. He sat within 3 ft of others filling out paperwork at the front desk. This is very bad for our community especially for people my age.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the investigation, SJBPH also discovered Hilltop House had not self-certified its operations to show it is following public health orders such as implementing proper infection prevention practices.<\/p>\n

Devine said SJBPH asked the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice, the state agency that regulates Hilltop House, for assistance in improving the facility\u2019s infection control and public health order compliance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey quickly showed to be a great partner and made quick contact with the facility to work through their infection control practices and the details of the complaint,\u201d Devine said.<\/p>\n

Patricia Billinger, spokeswoman for the division, said Hilltop House\u2019s leadership and staff members were contacted to direct them to complete the self-certification process and to ask about certain practices at the facility.<\/p>\n

Billinger did not have the specifics of Nov. 27\u2019s complaint, other than a \u201cclient did not feel safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris Farley, whose son-in-law is in the Hilltop House program, said the outbreak of COVID-19 cases has complicated and endangered his family.<\/p>\n

Farley said Hilltop House officials, trying to reduce the number of residents, put the burden on his family to relocate his son-in-law. Because Farley and his wife are at high risk for the virus, his son-in-law couldn\u2019t stay at their house.<\/p>\n

As a result, Farley\u2019s son-in-law is using what money he saved to live in a hotel.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just didn\u2019t seem right to me that we should be on the hook for a correction facility\u2019s job they should be doing,\u201d Farley said. \u201cThey\u2019re (Hilltop) still collecting their money from corrections for looking over him. Something\u2019s wrong there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hilltop House is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides transitional housing to parolees and criminal offenders who are required to work and earn income while living in the community.<\/p>\n

The house is on Avenida del Sol, just west of downtown Durango.<\/p>\n

jromeo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

host of issues for community corrections facility<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[685,28,29,668,686],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-50074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-public-health","tag-san-juan-basin-health-department"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50074"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=50074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}