ELDER CARE BLUES

As we’ve been reporting for months, elder care facilities have been the hardest hit by COVID. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported more than 50,000 deaths from the virus directly connected to long-term elder care facilities. And veteran nursing home residences have seen some of the highest numbers of deaths.
Last week, it was revealed that a state-operated facility in Massachusetts, the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, was in a state of “total pandemonium” last March as nurses were ordered to move patients known to be infected with COVID into wards with uninfected residents. One worker described the situation as a “nightmare.”
In Massachusetts, 60 percent of all deaths from COVID-19 have been in nursing homes.
In Canada, the situation is even more extreme with over 80 percent of coronavirus deaths taking place in elder care facilities. Ireland and France report nursing home fatalities from the virus at over 50 percent. (As we report in another article in this week’s issue, Sweden also has seen high nursing home deaths, some 50 percent of all those who have died from COVID-19.)
In the U.S., just over 40 percent of nursing home patients are reported to have died from the virus.
As previously reported in the Trends Journal, many states and nursing homes have not reported elder care virus death rates. And, we noted a WSJ article, “Nursing Homes Don’t Have to Report Pre-May Covid-19 Deaths to U.S. Officials”… thus, the elder care COVID death rate is much higher.