Connecticut’s Test To Relocate Sick Nursing Home Patients Puts Rural Town, Health Care Workers On Edge

The Wall Street Journal: Connecticut Plans To Relocate Patients Recovering From Coronavirus, And The First Arrive In A Small Town
The rural town of Sharon, Conn., is the state’s first test of a plan to relocate older nursing-home residents recovering from the new coronavirus. More than 50 patients recovering from the virus who were discharged from hospitals in cities such as Hartford and Danbury moved into Sharon Health Care Center, the town’s 88-bed nursing home, this past week. To make room, the center moved out all of its regular residents, except for eight who tested positive for Covid-19. (De Avila, 4/26)

The New York Times: Nursing Homes In Some States Told To Take Patients Infected With Coronavirus 
Neal Nibur has lived in a nursing home for about a year, ever since he had a bad bout of pneumonia. Now, the 80-year-old man has not only his own health to worry about but that of his neighbors at the Poughkeepsie, N.Y., residence. Four new patients recently arrived from the hospital with Covid-19. They were admitted for one reason, according to staff members: A state guideline says nursing homes cannot refuse to take patients from hospitals solely because they have the coronavirus. (Barker and Harris, 4/24)

ProPublica: Nursing Homes Violated Basic Health Standards, Allowing The Coronavirus To Explode
One by one, toward the end of March, residents of Enumclaw Health and Rehabilitation Center outside of Seattle started coming down with symptoms of COVID-19. On March 22, residents in Rooms 503 and 522 were moved to a wing for COVID-19 patients. Another resident began showing symptoms, too, and was also moved. In all three cases, their roommates were left in their rooms and staff were given no instructions about using any added precautions to care for them. (Ornstein and Sanders, 4/24)

The Associated Press: Can Nursing Homes Dedicated To Virus Patients Stop Spread?
A few states may have found a way to help slow the spread of the coronavirus in nursing homes by converting some of them into “recovery centers” set aside mostly for residents who have left the hospital but still might be contagious or lack immunity. Critics worry about harming frail, elderly residents by transferring them to make room in repurposed nursing homes. (Haigh, 4/26)

ProPublica: “Did I Mess This Up?” A Father Dying From Coronavirus, A Distraught Daughter And A Midnight Rescue.
The voice on the message started out calm but soon faltered. Natasha Roland wanted to report what happened to her father at the Queens Adult Care Center, a home for some 350 low-income elderly and mentally ill adults that I’d described as an epidemiologist’s nightmare in a story the previous week. “They had been telling me since March that they didn’t have any virus cases,” Roland said, her words quickening. “They were telling me that my father was OK. When I went there to get my dad, he hadn’t eaten in a week. My dad was dying. He couldn’t move.” (Sapien, 4/25)

WBUR: COVID-19 Hits Elder Care Facilities In Mass. The Hardest, With More Than 1,300 Now Dead
COVID-19 has killed 2,360 people in Massachusetts to date, and the hardest-hit group has been seniors living in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. According to state data, more than a third of these facilities have at least one person who's tested positive, and the list grows by the day. (Wasser and Oakes, 4/24)

WBUR: 49 Residents — More Than One-Third — Of Belmont Manor Have Died From The Coronavirus 
Forty-nine residents who tested positive for the coronavirus in a Belmont nursing home have died. Another 67 residents and 73 staff also have the virus. The Belmont Manor nursing home is licensed for 135 beds, and according to a spokeswoman, the facility was near capacity when the pandemic began. This means that in a matter of weeks, more than a one-third of all residents have died, and all but a dozen or so have the virus. (Wasser, 4/24)

Boston Globe: Assisted-Living Sites Struggle With Coronavirus In Shadow Of Nursing Home Crisis
As the coronavirus sweeps through Massachusetts nursing homes, leaving a trail of deaths that now tops 1,600, a parallel crisis has been playing out with far less scrutiny in another setting housing vulnerable seniors: assisted living. Massachusetts officials have been quietly tracking COVID-19 cases and deaths in the state’s 260 assisted-living facilities — many of which contain memory care units — since last month. Word had trickled out of outbreaks at Boston-area residences, such as Sunrise of Arlington, The Falls at Cordingly Dam in Newton, and Goddard House in Brookline. (Weisman, 4/26)

San Francisco Chronicle: California Doesn’t Disclose Coronavirus Deaths At Nursing Homes 
As deaths from the coronavirus rise, topping 1,500 across California, families are left in the dark about how many of those occur in the nursing homes, where their ill parents and others they love remain isolated, because the state Department of Public Health has so far declined to say. In Santa Clara County, which does disclose the data, nearly 30% of all coronavirus deaths have occurred in nursing homes. Now, advocates for residents say the lack of data on nursing home deaths hides how widespread and deadly the virus is in those settings, and withholds critical information from people who have to decide whether to move into a facility or remain in one. (Ravani, 4/24)

Detroit Free Press: See The Nursing Homes Reporting Current COVID-19 Cases In Michigan
For the first time since the outbreak of the coronavirus, the Michigan health department released the names of dozens of nursing homes impacted by the pandemic and the number of current COVID-19 cases in facilities across the state. Nine out of the 10 largest current outbreaks in the state are at facilities in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties. The tri-county area accounts for 75% of all the state's current cases.  (Hall, Anderson and Tanner, 4/24)