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Forum Name: General Discussion
Forum Description: (General discussion regarding the next pandemic)
URL: http://www.avianflutalk.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=42465 Printed Date: May 02 2024 at 6:03am
Topic: Nursing home evac due to staff no showsPosted By: Newbie1A
Subject: Nursing home evac due to staff no shows
Date Posted: April 09 2020 at 7:53am
My heart breaks for our seniors in these retirement homes...
Replies: Posted By: kaye kaye
Date Posted: April 23 2020 at 8:07pm
Coronavirus patients admitted to Queens nursing home — with body bags
The first coronavirus patients admitted to a Queens https://nypost.com/2020/04/23/nursing-homes-cant-reject-coronavirus-patients-cuomo-says/" style="margin-block-end: 0px; margin-inline-end: 0px; margin-block-start: 0px; margin-inline-start: 0px; color: rgb(17, 77, 164); text-decoration: none; - nursing home under a controversial state mandate arrived along with some grim accessories — a supply of body bags, The Post has learned.
An executive at the facility — which was previously free of the deadly disease — said the bags were in the shipment of personal protective equipment received the same day the home was forced to begin treating two people discharged from hospitals with COVID-19.
“My colleague noticed that one of the boxes was extremely heavy. Curious as to what could possibly be making that particular box so much heavier than the rest, he opened it,” the exec told The Post Thursday.
“The first two coronavirus patients were accompanied by five body bags.”
Within days, three of the bags were filled with the first of 30 residents who would die there after Gov. Cuomo’s Health Department handed down its March 25 directive that bars nursing homes from refusing to admit “medically stable” coronavirus patients, the exec said.
Like clockwork, the nursing home has received five body bags a week — every week — from city officials.
“Cuomo has blood on his hands. He really does. There’s no way to sugarcoat this,” the health care executive added.
“Why in the world would you be sending coronavirus patients to a nursing home, where the most vulnerable population to this disease resides?”
Since March 25, the Queens nursing home has admitted 17 patients from hospitals who tested positive for coronavirus, but in a bitter irony most of them have fared well, the exec said. Those who have died passed away without a test or while awaiting the results from one.
“The rest of the people are dropping like flies — literally like flies — and most of them have been with us for years,” the exec added.
COVID-19 has killed at least 3,540 residents of New York’s nursing homes and adult care facilities as of Wednesday, according to the most recent state Health Department data.
The Queens story is painfully repeating at a Manhattan nursing home.
Administrators there told The Post they’ve also received body bags in weekly shipments of supplies, which City Hall confirmed the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene was distributing to nursing homes.
One of the Manhattan administrators said the state’s admission mandate came with no warning or even time to prepare facilities for an influx of coronavirus patients, who the state says must be quarantined inside nursing homes and treated by separate staffers.
Posted By: Flubergasted
Date Posted: April 23 2020 at 9:43pm
Wow. This is the first time I have heard anything that really made me question Gov. Cuomo's judgment. I was not aware of this mandate. Any nursing home that was free of Covid 19 should not have been forced to jeopardize their residents this way. Surely there were nursing homes with cases already that could have been used? It would have been far better to designate one nursing home, and move current residents out to accommodate the influx of covid 19 cases.
It makes sense to get those folks out of hospitals. I get it, but this...is not right. Even an empty hotel with national guard medics would have made more sense if they were stable.
Posted By: WitchMisspelled
Date Posted: April 23 2020 at 10:10pm
I don't think this is a new mandate. I remember hearing about it at one of his first briefs. If there wasn't a way to quarantine patients, then nursing homes were to call HHS to deal with the issue. The Attorney General is now involved to review the Nursing Homes' roles in all this. I won't say Cuomo is blameless in this. That remains to be seen. But I can't see laying blanket blame on him or the nursing homes more than any other Governor and nursing home facilities dealing with similar issues.
Posted By: kaye kaye
Date Posted: April 23 2020 at 10:24pm
March 25th this change was made.
COVID-19 has killed at least 3,540 residents of New York’s nursing homes and adult care facilities as of Wednesday, according to the most recent state Health Department data.
------------- keep the joy
Posted By: kaye kaye
Date Posted: April 23 2020 at 10:36pm
Ohio has 600 dead from the virus in rest homes. It is a shame we all SIP and the elderly are still dying in huge numbers.
------------- keep the joy
Posted By: Flubergasted
Date Posted: April 23 2020 at 11:17pm
My viewpoint is informed by my experience in longterm care. In the normal course of things, yes, a nursing home should be able to manage isolating a patient with an infectious disease. However, we are talking about a highly infectious disease now, and isolating groups of patients. Given the usual low levels of education typical of staffers in these low paying jobs, I don't think it is wise to expect a good outcome in this scenario. The facilities that will manage to control covid 19 in their communities will be the exception in my opinion.
I'm really worried about what reopening economies is going to mean in longterm care facilities. Staff members in longterm care are really varied in terms of education and commitments outside of work.
As for myself, I will remain in lockdown mode, just going to work and only doing absolutely essential things in public places. Still having groceries and such delivered. I'm wearing a mask, but I don't see as much mask wearing in my community as I think the situation warrants.
As things start to open up, I find myself worrying that some of my coworkers will start to relax their precautions, and we could see covid 19 in our longterm care community.
Right now, my county only has one nursing home with covid 19 cases. I wonder how long after reopening it will be before that changes. BTW, our county has fewer than 400 confirmed cases as of Tuesday. Have not seen the figures for Wednesday yet. We have done a pretty good job up to now keeping our numbers down, but I don't feel optimistic about the reopening.
Posted By: KiminNM
Date Posted: April 26 2020 at 10:47am
Totally agree with Flubergasted. Employees are a critical contact point at long term care facilities, and if they're not well trained and provided with PPE, disasters will happen.
A close friend's mom was in a long term memory care facility in Riverside CA. No cases of Covid. She went to the hospital for her quarterly kidney shunt replacement, where they discovered she had pneumonia, and tested positive for Covid-19. She was patient zero at the facility. It was later discovered that there were 2 asymptomatic staff members, so she got it from one of them. (She'd had NO contact with anyone else)
My friend's mom died Friday.
No word yet on how many other residents are positive.
New Mexico is providing stats on which facilities have residents that test positive - and a lot of them are dying.
Posted By: FluMom
Date Posted: April 26 2020 at 11:02am
I am so sorry for anyone in a nursing home or assisted living facility they are death camps as far as I am concerned. The people who work there will bring Covid19 into the facilities just like talked about above. My mom is 97 and thank God she is in her own apartment and with my sisters help gets her groceries from her and she cooks her own food We are Blessed because she is so good on her own...but we know that can change any day and pray she is able to stay on her own through all of this!
Posted By: kaye kaye
Date Posted: April 27 2020 at 2:49pm