re: Nursing Home Covid Deaths By State: Even more reason to open this up.

I 100% agree that there is no way to keep it out
I’ll also say that the steps that have been taken have kept cases down
The issue isn’t always the virus
Because CNA’s are paid such a criminally low wage they don’t show up to work
This delays meals & delays meds
It means laundry is lost

The activity director & social worker should be spending time with each resident on a rotation
The ones that cannot get out of bed have no human interaction except when meds or a meal is delivered, lately by the activities director or social worker because kitchen staff didn’t show up

These people are going to die not because of a virus but because they gave up due to loneliness

I’m not in the medical profession but staff handing out meals that ARE NOT WEARING GLOVES is insane to me, regardless of if there is a pandemic or not

I’m not a medical professional but stopping visitors & continuing to serve meals in the dining hall makes no sense

Maybe admins aren’t allowed to make their staff wear masks until LDH mandates it but common sense should prevail

Again, I am in no way faulting the nursing home but there are lessons to be learned by everyone

I understand that some feel that they are underfunded but looking at it from a private pay point of view & we feel short changed too

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Your got an infection that that is contagious but invisible for 4-11 days,

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1+. Therein lies the problem. Workers are infectious, long before they experience symptoms and MANY don't experience symptoms. NH's and hospitals have developed good questionnaires to ask of workers and check temperature of workers before allowing them to enter the facility. But what good is any of that if a large % of those currently infected and contagious w/ covid don't have symptoms (some studies are suggesting as many as 30-40% of covid patients don't have symptoms)? For the worker who gets covid and develops symptoms, they were still contagious and shedding virus to all their contacts for 2-3 days before developing symptoms. Given this, how can one prevent covid from entering a NH? That's where all these agencies and government have let us down. Where are the SPECIFIC guidelines from the CDC to prevent covid from entering a NH? What we've go now doesn't work. Where is the rapid, affordable and easily done PCR testing for covid that could be done by a HS graduate or LPN on workers entering the health care facility? That way one could pick up covid workers in the early stages of the illness and ward off the patients exposed to that worker before covid has gone through the entire facility. To test for covid, a nursing home can't afford a $90K device and a lab tech to run the device. Sometimes one can't help but wonder: Is the government really interested in shutting down covid in the nursing homes??

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In the long term care setting, the setting where i make my living, this thing is impossible to stop once it’s in. Your got an infection that that is contagious but invisible for 4-11 days, as we have been told. We, along with many of my colleagues and counterparts, have done everything we have been instructed to do. We have been ahead of most of the the guidelines from CDC, CMS, And the LDH. Even though we have done that, infection is still spreading. You couple that with residents who have most every comorbitity that you should avoid, death is a real possibility. That said, you won’t hear about how the majority of our residents have or are recovering.

We have a strong lobby, yes. We have to have that or we would be even further underfunded, but no one wants to listen to that.

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^^^