Weeks after counties and companies took it upon themselves to test senior care home residents and staff for the coronavirus, Gov. Kate Brown has promised to test everyone in every large care home in the state.

“From the beginning of this pandemic, it has been one of my top priorities to protect the residents and staff of long-term care facilities,” Brown said in Tuesday evening statement announcing the testing plan.

Brown has tasked the two chief state agencies overseeing the coronavirus response in senior care homes to devise a concrete plan to test all 60,000 workers and residents in nursing and assisted living homes.

The broad testing will be key to figuring out how to reopen long-term care facilities to visitors, the governor’s office said.

The plan, which Brown’s office said will be released later this week, does not include adult foster homes — smaller settings that house no more than five residents for a total of about 5,300 in the state, along with about 2,750 workers.

Unlicensed homes for elderly people also are not part of the plan. They account for eight of the state’s 90 senior care home deaths, a newsroom analysis of Oregon Health Authority data shows.

Brown’s announcement brings Oregon into the company of many other states that have previously ordered or started planning for broad testing, including Washington, California, New Jersey and New York. The federal government has said that broad and regular testing is key to reopening nursing homes as the rest of society eases back into normalcy.

While short on specifics, the state’s current proposal is to prioritize testing at nursing homes with medically fragile people, including those that serve people with dementia.

Nursing homes generally are intended for people with greater medical needs, face stricter regulations and must employ certified caregivers. The facilities account for 56 of the state’s 82 deaths associated with licensed care homes, a newsroom analysis shows.

The state’s testing strategy will focus on facilities in cities and counties where most of the outbreaks have occurred, the governor’s office said: those in the tri-county Portland metro area as well as Yamhill, Marion and Polk counties.

Long-term care ombudsman Fred Steele, who has advocated for broad testing in senior care homes, said Brown’s plan is “a welcome decision” and, in combination with plans to prevent further spread of the virus, “a very positive development for Oregonians” in large senior care homes.

Some senior care home companies and counties had already taken the initiative to offer tests to all staff and residents in their facilities, including Yamhill and Linn counties as well as the senior care home company Avamere Family of Companies.

Oregon’s coronavirus epidemic in senior care homes started around mid-March with infections at the state veterans home in Lebanon and blew up around mid-April, when The Oregonian/OregonLive reported that 10 residents from the Southeast Portland nursing home Healthcare at Foster Creek had died. Another 20 people connected to that home have since died.

The scope of Oregon’s senior care home outbreaks has since subsided, with currently 16 nursing and assisted living homes reporting one or more coronavirus cases, according to a state Department of Human Services list published Tuesday. The list of affected nursing and assisted living homes peaked at 27 facilities.

But new outbreaks continue to appear, with at least 31 of 38 residents at a Canby rehabilitation center diagnosed with the disease as of Monday.

The plan to work through all the large long-term care facilities does come with a hitch: the federal government’s ability to send Oregon the necessary supplies.

Citing federal guidelines recommending that all nursing home residents and workers get at least one test, Brown on Tuesday asked federal health officials for deliveries of test swabs and the substance used to transport test samples.

In her letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Brown wrote that while Oregon has a plan to test all residents and workers in long-term care, the state is “hampered” by its “uneven and limited supply” of the materials.

“Actions speak louder than words,” Brown said in her Tuesday announcement. “It’s far past time for the federal government to step up and send Oregon the testing supplies we need.”

This article was originally published by The Oregonian/OregonLive, one of more than a dozen news organizations throughout the state sharing their coverage of the novel coronavirus outbreak to help inform Oregonians about this evolving heath issue.