Almost 40% of COVID-19 deaths nationwide are concentrated in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, at least in the states reporting the data, a non-profit foundation’s analysis found…
— from “Nearly 40% of COVID-19 Deaths Occurred in Nursing & Assisted Living Homes” by Jessica McBride on the Heavy.com website, updated May 18, 2020.
We have been fortunate, in Archuleta County, as the number of new COVID cases in Colorado appears to be holding steady after a spike on late April. We’ve had only 8 reported cases, and no new cases since mid-April. In particular, Archuleta County has reported no outbreaks in its two ‘assisted living’ facilities, Pine Ridge Extended Care Center and Beehive Homes of Pagosa Springs.
The US as a whole has not been so lucky.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2.1 million people live in nursing homes or residential care facilities, representing 0.6% of the US population. And yet residents in those facilities have apparently accounted for 42% of all COVID-19 fatalities — for states that report such statistics — according to the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, FREOPP.org
The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity identifies itself as a “non-profit think tank focused on expanding economic opportunity to those who least have it.” Their calculations are available in an online spreadsheet for public review. Seven US states are not tracking fatalities by type of residence.
One study of Colorado nursing home concluded that asymptomatic nursing home employees were coming to work and sickening elderly residents. A Washington Post study in late April found that one of six assisted care facilities nationwide were reporting COVID-19 infections.
In an article on the FREOPP.org website, reporter Gregg Girvan referred to the nursing home crisis as the “most underappreciated aspect of the novel coronavirus pandemic.” FREOPP.org also noted:
The US is not an outlier in terms of its nursing home-related COVID-19 fatalities. A study by researchers at the International Long Term Care Policy Network of fatalities in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom found that 40.8 percent of reported COVID-19 fatalities took place in nursing homes.
“At least half of older adults living in long-term care facilities suffer from cognitive impairment with Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. “Memory care services, designed to meet the unique needs of residents with dementia, are often provided in dedicated care units or wings of a facility. Infection prevention strategies to prevent the spread of COVID-19 are especially challenging to implement in dedicated memory care units.”
According to Denver news station KDVR, in a story posted on May 13:
Dozens of Colorado nursing homes have been issued citations for not following proper safety protocols during the coronavirus pandemic.
The FOX31 Problem Solvers have learned 61 percent of COVID-19 deaths in Colorado are from nursing homes and long-term senior care facilities. The state is now reporting 206 outbreaks in Colorado.
No facilities have seen more confirmed cases or deaths than the Cherry Creek Nursing Center in Aurora, with 103 confirmed cases between staff and residents and 26 confirmed deaths…
…The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has issued 156 citations to residential care facilities. The most common violations include not following personal protective equipment (PPE) guidelines, improper hand washing and a failure to implement social distancing guidelines.
Some pandemics, such as the 1918 Spanish flu, have struck down victims across all age ranges. Fatal effects of COVID-19 have been focused almost entirely on seniors. Here’s a graph from the FREOPP.org article:
Despite this dramatic difference in how COVID-19 affects people in various age groups, the ‘one size fits all’ approach to locking down local and state economies has thus far failed to accommodate the difference.
Instead, a general consensus among public health officials and policy makers continues to specify locked-down or ‘socially distanced’ schools, colleges and non-essential businesses — seemingly in hopes that we will reach some level of herd immunity, or will see the arrival of a universal vaccine. We are many months, if not years, away from meeting those thresholds.
Meanwhile, our nursing homes continue to see high levels of infection and death.
The FREEOPP.org website concludes:
States and localities should consider reorienting their policy responses away from younger and healthier people, and toward the elderly, and especially elderly individuals living in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.