Coronavirus Deaths at U.S. Nursing Homes Pass 3,800, With 45 at Virginia Facility – The New York Times, Nytimes.com

The facility has a one-star health inspection rating from Medicare, meaning there are more health risks there than at the average nursing home. In October, during the most recent review , federal inspectors found deficiencies and said that staff members had failed to follow infection-control procedures for at least one resident. The staff corrected the error within days and a new owner took over this year.

Canterbury has better access to protective gear now than it did a month ago, Dr. Wright said, but staff members still do not have enough disposable gowns to put on a new one every time they switch patients. Instead, they have patient-specific gowns that they reuse. About 25 staff members have fallen ill with the virus, he said. . Wright is also the only doctor currently at Canterbury after another doctor, fearing he had been exposed to the virus, quarantined himself. But after days, he did not return. Dr. Wright said his departure left the nursing home in “a bit of a crunch.” To keep up with the devastating toll the virus was taking on the facility’s patients, Jennie Webb-Wright, Dr. Wright’s wife, who is also a physician with a nearby hospital system, spent three weeks volunteering at the Canterbury facility.

The nursing home’s chronic shortage of nurses as well as its population of older, poor residents, most of whom rely on Medicaid, made it easy for the virus to wreak havoc. Still, the pervasiveness of the virus took staff members by surprise.

We were shocked, ”Dr. Wright said. “We thought we had it relatively contained until the results started coming in. And that revealed to us how far behind we were. ” That he does expect more deaths, but said that the virus – finally – appeared to be letting up. Residents are recovering, and the rates of deaths and new cases have both dropped. “That’s a hopeful sign,” he said.

Reporting was contributed by Sarah Almukhtar, Rob Gebeloff, John Leland, Alison Saldanha, Timothy Williams and Karen Yourish.

  

    

                        

                          Updated April ,

                                      

                 (When will this end?                

This is a difficult question, because a lot depends on how well the virus is contained . A better question might be: “How will we know when to reopen the country?” In an American Enterprise Institute report , Scott Gottlieb, Caitlin Rivers, Mark B. McClellan, Lauren Silvis and Crystal Watson staked out four goal posts for recovery

: Hospitals in the state must be able to safely treat all patients requiring hospitalization, without resorting to crisis standards of care; the state needs to be able to at least test everyone who has symptoms; the state is able to conduct monitoring of confirmed cases and contacts; and there must be a sustained reduction in cases for at least days.                             ()                  (How can I help?)