NEWS: Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday he was trying to determine how to allow visitors at nursing homes.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday he was trying to determine how to allow visitors at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities for the first time since the start of the coronavirus outbreak.
“We’ve got to figure out a way to get to yes, we’ve got to figure out a way to give some folks hope and be able to see their family,” DeSantis said at a Tallahassee news conference. “I am not going to sign off unless I’m convinced it’s going to be safe. But I don’t think we could just say no. I think we have a responsibility to try.”
But he added, “if it’s a situation where we’re running a risk of having an outbreak, we’ll err on the side of caution.”
He said he did not want to put a timetable on allowing visits. But he used similar language about trying to “get to yes” in a visit to Orlando on May 2 when talking about salons and barbershop openings in Orlando — just a few days before his administration allowed those businesses to reopen throughout most of the state.
Emmett Reed, executive director of the Florida Health Care Association, agreed with DeSantis’ goal.
“We want family members to be able to hug the grandmother, their grandfather, their aunt, their uncle, their brother, their sister,” he said. “We know the residents want things to return back to normal, too. They want to be able to play bingo, they want to have meals with their friends, but we have to do it safely.”
Reed said the ultimate solution could be some combination of “strong screening procedures, testing, proper infection controls and PPE [personal protective equipment], designated areas with appropriate social distancing, along with a process that is facility and communityspecific based on the impact of COVID-19.”
DeSantis defended his administration’s record on long term care facilities and nursing homes, following news media reports that showed only a relatively small number of residents had been tested.
A Miami Herald report Wednesday showed that one month after DeSantis began sending “strike” testing teams to nursing homes, about 13,000 residents and staff at 150 facilities had been tested out of the 150,000 residents and 200,000 staff at 700 nursing homes and 3,100 assisted living facilities in Florida.
As of this week, 1,787 patients and 1,840 staff have tested positive at these facilities, with 745 residents and eight employees dead. New cases at these facilities have not yet plateaued.
DeSantis added that while he wants universal testing at nursing homes, “it’s going to take a nuanced approach to logistically do it.” He said seniors can already get tested at designated lanes at drivethrough testing sites and cautioned that some patients may refuse to get tested.
He said “sentinel” surveillance testing teams have also traveled to 25 facilities to conduct testing on a sampling of facility employees, adding that the Veterans Administration has added its own 15 teams of testers.
DeSantis also said the state “stepped in” to provide personal protection equipment to nursing homes. But it did so after the trade association for long term care facilities, the Florida Health Care Association, wrote a letter to the editor in a South Florida newspaper complaining about a lack of PPE and arguing there was no way they could comply with the PPE requirements.