Legislators are calling for bans on care facility visitors to ease.

In letter to health commissioner, they argue isolation more harmful than virus to residents

A group of state legislators is asking that Texas ease its restrictions to allow family members to visit loved ones in long-term care facilities, even as the number of coronavirus cases here swells.

Visitors have been barred since mid-March from nursing homes and assisted living facilities — part of an effort to keep vulnerable residents safe from COVID-19. Still, residents continued to die at an outsize rate, while the isolation also took a toll on some.

“We could relay multiple heart-wrenching stories from our constituents, but we assume that you have heard many of these types of realities,” the 55 legislators wrote in a letter to the state health and human services interim executive commissioner on Thursday.

Family members have worried so much over the welfare of loved ones, both isolated and at risk, that some have considered moving them out.

The state’s restrictions, though they could be difficult, were in place to protect the health and safety of the residents and staff, wrote Christine Mann, spokesperson for the Health and Human Services Commission.

“We will continue adapting our policies and procedures as conditions permit,” she wrote.

Even with restrictions that banned visits and all group activities, nursing home residents are disproportionately dying from the virus, making up 37 percent of the state’s reported deaths as of Thursday. The number of reported nursing home cases also increased significantly Thursday — because of previous data entry errors. Nearly three-quarters of nursing homes had reported an infected staff member or resident.

Though the state has facilitated grants to improve technology for communicating, the legislators, led by state Rep. Scott Sanford, R-McKinney, and state Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, argued that the isolation was worse than the virus itself.

Residents in “health facilities and living centers” with mental issues were especially suffering from the lock-down, unable to engage virtually and unable to understand why loved ones weren’t visiting, they wrote.

“We will not stand to let these Texans fall through the cracks,” they wrote. “Their life is important. The fact is this disease is not what’s hurting them; it’s the harmful restrictions we have in place that are.”