A spike in the number of coronavirus cases in Detroit’s nursing homes is straining the region’s hospitals and is partially responsible for an uptick in the state’s already-high mortality rate. Now, public health officials are working to head off the kind of facility-based outbreak that has killed hundred of elderly nursing home residents in Seattle, New York and elsewhere. Dr. Teena Chopra, a professor at the Wayne State University School of Medicine and a DMC epidemiologist, called the growing mortality rate among the region’s nursing home population “astonishing.” She estimated that about 60% of coronavirus-infected residents who are admitted to metro Detroit hospitals die, and that the population accounts for at least 25% of the region’s overall coronavirus deaths. The Detroit Health Department and Wayne State University are heading up a new citywide testing effort, with a goal of testing the entire resident population at one nursing home per day.