4/17/20, “Nearly 40% of New Jersey’s Covid-19 Deaths Were at Nursing Homes,” Bloomberg, Elise Young
“Nearly 40% of coronavirus-related fatalities in New Jersey have taken place at nursing homes, according to data newly disclosed by state officials.
Outbreaks have been reported at 394 of the state’s 503 long-term care facilities, which include nursing, assisted-living and dementia-care homes. Those facilities have recorded 9,094 cases and 1,530 deaths, the data show. New Jersey has reported a total of 3,840 deaths statewide….
A new county-by-county breakdown of nursing-home cases and deaths shows the most cases, 1,831, in Bergen County, and that four of 21 counties have about half the cases –– Bergen, Morris, Essex and Middlesex. The Andover facility is the state’s largest of its kind, with 420 residents at last count, state Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said on Thursday. On April 11, the health department got a report that multiple bodies were on site, she said. Officials sent a team at 2 a.m. on April 12, and over 24 hours, 17 bodies were recovered. In all, Andover has had 19 Covid-19 deaths. At least 100 others, and 48 staff, also have the virus, she said.
Staffing Strains
The owner reported adequate staffing on Thursday morning, Persichilli said. A woman who answered the phone at a number listed for the Andover home’s co-owner, Chaim Scheinbaum, said he wasn’t available. She declined to say how he could be reached.
A person who answered the nursing home’s phone said no one was available to comment. No one immediately responded to a voicemail left for the nursing home’s administration.
State and federal inspectors and state investigators were on site, Governor Phil Murphy said Friday….
Previously, the state reported at least a dozen Covid-19 deaths at Elizabeth Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Union County….
Murphy said New Jersey will include nursing homes in a statewide examination when the crisis is over.
“It’s quite clear both nationally and within our own state that long-term care is going to be a particular focus,” he said. “There are expectations of conduct by the operators of these facilities.””
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Added: Nearly 40% of US virus deaths occur at nursing homes, per AP. New York State by far leads the nation in nursing home deaths:
4/17/20, “‘Heartbreaking’ report shows virus ravaging NY nursing homes,” AP
“New York, by far the nation’s leader in coronavirus nursing home deaths, released details Friday on outbreaks in individual facilities after weeks of refusing, revealing one home in Brooklyn where 55 people died and four others with at least 40 deaths….
The state’s accounting of multiple deaths at 68 nursing homes was based on a survey and is substantially incomplete. It accounted for less than half of the 2,690 nursing home deaths that have been reported in the state. It also didn’t include people who got sick in nursing homes, but then died at hospitals.
But it was the first time the state provided any information about homes that, according to an Associated Press tally, account for nearly 40% of the nation’s 6,912 deaths in such facilities.
At the top of the list with 55 deaths was Cobble Hill Health Center, a 300-bed facility in a 19th-century former hospital in a tony section of Brooklyn.
Four ambulances arrived within an hour at the facility Friday, underscoring the ongoing crisis. Police showed up to assist with the removal of bodies, including one that was wheeled out the front door.
The Cobble Hill home said in a statement that the deaths it reported were “based on the possibility of COVID-19 being a factor,” adding testing in nursing homes remains “extremely difficult to obtain.”
“Although we’ve had an increase in deaths during the past few weeks, we have not been able to confirm that the deaths are specifically related to COVID-19,” the statement said.
A total of 19 homes in New York’s report listed 20 deaths or more.
The survey’s release came a day after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration reversed course and promised transparency about the worst outbreaks, after previously saying residents at the hardest-hit homes deserved privacy. Few states have released such information.
Cuomo did not respond directly when asked at his daily coronavirus briefing why his administration had not alerted the public about the outbreaks sooner.
“We’ve been talking about nursing homes every day for the past 30 days,” Cuomo said….
The state’s list omitted homes with fewer than five deaths.
Connecticut released a similar list Thursday, reporting that eight nursing homes had at least 10 residents die. In Connecticut, nursing home residents account for 375 of the state’s 971 virus deaths [about 39%].
Officials at several of the nursing homes on the list said they were doing their best, and attributed the high number of deaths to the fragility of their patients and difficulty in keeping the virus out, rather than substandard care….
Scacco said the facility, whose residents include war veterans and Holocaust survivors was ravaged despite having infection control practices that exceed CDC and health department regulations and guidelines….
Stephen Hanse, president and CEO of the New York State Health Facilities Association and the New York State Center for Assisted Living, said the figures reflect the fact that those facilities are dealing with extremely vulnerable patients.
“Outbreaks are not the result of inattentiveness or a shortcoming in our facilities,” he wrote in a statement. “The very nature of long-term care is a high touch environment where social distancing is not an option. Staff are helping residents with bathing, dressing, eating and other personal daily needs.”
He also blamed the [New York] state health department for worsening the situation by barring nursing homes from denying admission to patients with COVID-19 if they were medically stable.
Nursing homes have been known since the earliest days of the outbreak as a likely trouble spot….
Yet even with that early warning, many nursing homes remained without adequate supplies of personal protective equipment. Testing for residents and staff remains spotty, at best.
Federal officials in mid-March banned visitors, halted group activities and ordered mandatory screening of workers for respiratory symptoms, but by then the virus had quietly spread widely….
Many nursing home administrators also previously declined to release information, leading Cuomo to say this week that the state would begin requiring homes to inform patients and their families within 24 hours if a resident got the virus or died.
Chris Laxton, executive director of the The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, applauded the state for releasing the data. But he said facilities still desperately need the state’s help.
“We continue to be in urgent need of PPE, especially gowns, test kits, and surge staff, to limit staff from traveling between buildings and risking additional spread,’ Laxton said.
Some nursing homes have disclosed information voluntarily that differed from the numbers put out by the state Friday.
The state survey listed 10 deaths at the Montgomery Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, about 50 miles north of New York City, but facility Vice President Vincent Maniscalco said 21 residents have died recently. Eight of those patients, he said, had symptoms consistent with the virus but died prior to being tested….
An Associated Press report found infections were continuing to find their way into nursing homes because screening staff for a fever or questioning them about symptoms didn’t catch people who were infected but asymptomatic.”
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