quote:

We need to do something differently than we have been as a country.

quote:

Facilities caring for older adults are struggling with low staffing levels, as COVID-19 makes an ongoing problem even worse. Nursing home operators say they’re scrambling to make sure they have enough nurses and others to ensure the safety and well-being of residents.

In a matter of hours in early October, Paul Gaebe’s Friday went from normal to one of dire emergency. A resident at Mother of Mercy assisted living facility in Albany, had COVID-19.

“We had several staff that had contact with that individual,” Gaebe said. “And suddenly we went from normal staffing to short staffing within less than a day.”

Then a handful of high school students who also worked as care attendants at the home quit. Gaebe says they worried they wouldn’t be able to attend school if they were working with patients who had COVID-19.

“In a matter of about 24 hours we lost 16 employees.”

Gaebe experienced what many of his colleagues in the long-term care industry have learned over the last eight months.

“They said that when it hits, be prepared that it can go through your staffing, it could just ravage your staffing plans in such a short time.”

Gaebe tried to find fill-ins from nearby facilities, but they were also short on staff, and concerned about rising COVID-19 spread. He found the staff he needed through a state-run pool of nursing home staff.

quote:

“In a matter of about 24 hours we lost 16 employees.”

quote:

Despite Trump administration efforts to erect a protective shield around nursing homes, coronavirus cases are surging within facilities in states hard hit by the latest onslaught of COVID-19.

An analysis of federal data from 20 states for The Associated Press finds that new weekly cases among residents rose nearly four-fold from the end of May to late October, from 1,083 to 4,274. Resident deaths more than doubled, from 318 a week to 699, according to the study by University of Chicago health researchers Rebecca Gorges and Tamara Konetzka.

Equally concerning, weekly cases among nursing home staff in surge states more than quadrupled, from 855 the week ending May 31, to 4,050 the week ending Oct. 25. That rings alarms because infected staffers not yet showing symptoms are seen as the most likely way the virus gets into facilities. When those unwitting staffers test positive, they are sidelined from caring for residents, raising pressures on remaining staff.

The administration has allocated $5 billion to nursing homes, shipped nearly 14,000 fast-test machines with a goal of supplying every facility and tried to shore up stocks of protective equipment. But the data call into question the broader White House game plan, one that pushes states to reopen while maintaining that vulnerable people can be cocooned, even if the virus rebounds around them.

“Trying to protect nursing home residents without controlling community spread is a losing battle,” said Konetzka, a nationally recognized expert on long-term care. “Someone has to care for vulnerable nursing home residents, and those caregivers move in and out of the nursing home daily, providing an easy pathway for the virus to enter.”