Florida is letting elderly residents languish in COVID-ridden nursing homes
When COVID-19 overwhelmed New York’s hospitals a few months ago, the state moved positive patients into nursing homes, resulting in the senseless deaths of thousands of otherwise healthy elderly residents. Florida has had both the proverbial crystal ball to see those catastrophic results and the luxury of time to make alternate plans, so it is absolutely incomprehensible that Gov. DeSantis is intentionally following New York’s grave mistake by moving coronaviruspositive hospital patients into nursing homes and endangering the precious lives of thousands of Floridians.
At his July 7 press conference, DeSantis revealed the opening of a dozen COVID-19-only “isolation centers” throughout the state to relieve hospitals of medically stable coronavirus-positive patients. No one else inhabited these contained ‘waystations,’ where those transferred in received the long-term care (LTC) services they required until testing negative for discharge.
But that changed quickly. A loophole in Emergency Rule 59AER20-6 issued on July 15 by Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) allowed nursing homes occupied by healthy residents to accept COVID-positive hospital transfers into “a dedicated wing, unit, or building with dedicated staff.” Since then, AHCA’s list of isolation centers has jumped to 22 LTC homes with more than 1,400 beds for patients.
Even worse, the state has not implemented any safety protections for nursing homes’ existing full-time occupants. When I discussed with several supervisors in AHCA’s LTC Services Unit and its Office of Plans and Construction how an isolation wing needed to be sealed off physically from the rest of the building, how its air flow needed to be restricted, and what safeguards are mandated, all confirmed there are no requirements of LTC facilities to be deemed “isolation centers.” CDC guidelines are encouraged, but nothing is compulsory.
Yet even more appalling, in a show of utter negligence by the state, AHCA is not compelled to complete any inspections prior to these so-called isolation wings opening. Case in point: The last inspection AHCA performed at my grandfather’s nursing home transpired 18 days before its isolation wing opened and nearly two weeks before the issuance of the Emergency Rule that allows it!
This total absence of oversight is exacerbated by family members’ inability to enter nursing homes to see for ourselves the precautions taken to ensure our loved ones’ wellbeing (despite that being an understandable safeguard). The places entrusted with our loved ones’ welfare — that have broken our trust by deliberately bringing COVID-19 into their homes — are expected to be trusted yet again to house elderly people in these wings sight unseen. This is unequivocally wrong.
Nursing homes purportedly spent the last five months trying to keep coronavirus away from their high-risk population, but, woefully, have failed to do so. My grandfather was one of a handful of residents who tested COVID-19positive before his nursing home opened its COVID-19 isolation unit on July 20.
Moreover, the recent Department of Heath reports indicate a huge outbreak has already occurred there; its July 30 non-cumulative daily data (selfreported by the nursing home) shows 16 coronavirus-positive transfer patients have arrived while 37 residents and 17 staff members are COVID-19-positive. My grandfather’s LTC facility only has 120 beds, 50 of which are in their isolation wing. The math suggests that it is already overflowing.
Coronavirus testing in LTC homes is not being conducted frequently enough to prevent it from spreading. Even though residents are confined most of the time to their rooms, staff members leave the premises daily, only to be surrounded by a society rejecting masks and social distancing and hellbent on pursuing life as carefree as they did pre-pandemic. Employees who return to their jobs as asymptomatic carriers pass the virus to the defenseless residents relying on their care. Leaders entrusted with public safety seemingly have turned a blind eye to this reality and are not doing nearly enough to curb COVID-19’s propagation.
It is depraved and a gross injustice to consciously threaten thousands of vulnerable people, who are powerless to advocate for themselves, beholden to their living circumstances, not provided alternatives for their care and living arrangements and most susceptible to suffering and/or dying from COVID-19. The dearth of humanity and common sense is astonishing, and heartbreaking. No one is ensuring the best interests of Florida’s elderly community.
Instead of recklessly shepherding a highly contagious and deadly virus into the homes of its most atrisk demographic, the state and long-term care facilities should be implement more safety precautions to prevent COVID-19 from proliferating among those who live and work in the buildings. Their lives are significant — not expendable.