The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Feds open doors to nursing home visits
Kemp prepared to relax Georgia’s rules on those facilities’ visitations.
Within days, Georgians could be visiting their loved ones in nursing homes across the state, easing one of the most painful restrictions brought on by the yearlong COVID-19 pandemic.
The Biden administration on Thursday said that with nursing homes’ vaccination rates increasing and new infections plummeting, most should reopen to visitors — with limits.
Nursing home advocates said new rules would be conditional on the state relaxing its own emergency bans on nursing home visitation, and a spokeswoman for Gov. Brian Kemp, Mallory Blount, said the governor intends to do that, clearing the way.
After that, the Department of Public Health is expected to lay out rules and procedures, nursing home officials say. The homes would then take a couple of days to acquire more masks and ramp up.
“We’re very glad,” said Ginny Helms, president of Leadingage Georgia, which lobbies the Legis
lature on behalf of nonprofit organizations that provide housing and other services to the elderly.
“We felt like ... the residents had been suffering from isolation which led to both physical and emotional hardships,” she said. “And families were very concerned because they couldn’t lay their eyes on loved ones. Right now everyone is very excited.”
“It’s huge,” said Tony Marshall, an advocate for Georgia nursing homes.
The visits should take place regardless of the vaccination status of a resident or visitor, if the nursing homes meet several conditions. Not all do.
First, for indoor visits, a nursing home would have to have 70% or more of its residents vaccinated. Most do, as vaccination acceptance has been very high among patients. Advocates say one of the primary reasons for that is that residents understood vaccination was key to getting their visitors back.
Second, for a facility to qualify for indoor visits, the surrounding community could not be among the most uncontrolled COVID-19 hotspots. The rules only relax for nursing homes in counties where less than 10% of COVID-19 tests come back positive. As of March 8, positivity rates were too high in 15 of Georgia’s 159 counties, Marshall said.
In addition, there would be several exceptions for residents who were in quarantine, or residents of nursing homes with outbreaks. If one person in a home tests positive, all visitation would have to be suspended until facility-wide testing assures there is no outbreak.
Among other caveats, there are recommendations. For example, while indoor visits are allowed, the guidance encourages a preference for meeting outdoors.
Added risks
Nursing homes have seen some of the earliest and most devastating outbreaks of the pandemic, and their elderly residents are more vulnerable to severe disease and death from the coronavirus
than just about anyone. Implementing the lockdowns in many cases stemmed deaths and undoubtedly saved lives.
On the other side of that is the toll that isolation has taken on the senior residents, both emotional and physical. The accelerated deterioration of many patients with diseases such as Alzheimer’s is well-documented.
In addition, families and friends play an important role in advocating for residents, seeing in person how they’re being cared for and speaking up or reporting to authorities if necessary.
Dr. Carlos Del Rio, a professor of infectious diseases at Emory University, is torn over the new guidance.
Residents need to see their loved ones, he said. But the guidance is clear that residents who are not vaccinated should also
receive visitors in most cases, and that raises a host of concerns about enabling possible spread of the virus.
He is also concerned that unvaccinated family members could bring in disease to staff who are not vaccinated. While the majority of nursing home residents took the vaccine, nursing home staff were often reluctant and their vaccination rates are quite low.
Del Rio hopes frequent testing will be a part of the plan in order to catch potential outbreaks. He also hopes that rules will not just encourage, but require, distancing and masks for any meeting where someone is not vaccinated.
And if both the resident and the visitor have refused to be vaccinated? Del Rio paused and sighed. “The problem is you’re putting others at risk,” he said
referring to the possibility for new outbreaks.
Collision course
The guidance does not affect hospitals, assisted-living facilities or other senior care settings or health facilities.
But it would put the state’s nursing homes on a collision course with a proposed state law that would prohibit nursing homes and hospitals from limiting visits and has other provisions contradicting the federal guidance. The legislation, House Bill 290, proposed by Rep. Ed Setzler, R-acworth, passed the House on Monday and is awaiting consideration in the Senate.
Even if a facility were having an outbreak, the Georgia bill would not restrict visitation. That puts the bill in direct conflict with the new federal guidance.
Nursing homes would be caught between the two, and home would likely be forced to follow the federal guidance. Their advocates are anxious about that. “These types of things need to be driven by CMS (the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services),” said Helms.
Meanwhile, patients’ families are waiting to see their loved ones.
Lori Ballington, of Woodstock, is hoping to soon hug her mother-in-law, who lives in a memory care facility in Atlanta.
”Just to be able to touch her and give her the comfort she deserves,” said Ballington, who started to cry.
“I am not gong to jump up and down until I am in her room — and then I will excited,” she said.
OMAHA, NEBRASKA — Investor Warren Buffett’s fortune surged above $100 billion Wednesday when shares of his company hit a record high at more than $400,000 apiece.
Berkshire Hathaway’s Class A shares climbed to $407,750 Wednesday before giving up some ground to close the day at $398,840. The Class B shares of the Omaha-based conglomerate were selling for a much more affordable price of $263.99.
Berkshire’s shares have generally been increasing over the past two weeks since Buffett released his annual letter to shareholders late last month. Even with the coronavirus pandemic weighing on many of Berkshire’s businesses, the company reported a $35.8 billion fourth-quarter profit, largely due to paper gains on the value of its investments.
Buffett’s fortune, which is mostly tied to his ownership of 248,734 Class A shares, topped $101 billion at the stock’s peak Wednesday. But he would be worth significantly more if he hadn’t been giving away large blocks of Berkshire Hathaway stock annually to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and several other charities since 2006.
Buffett estimates that the shares he has given to charity over the years were worth more than $37 billion total at the time they were given away.
The 90-year-old investor was once the world’s richest man, but he has fallen back to No. 5 in Forbes magazine’s current list of the world’s richest people. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is listed as the world’s richest man with a $179.6 billion fortune.
Buffett’s Berkshire owns more than 90 companies outright, including BNSF railroad, Geico insurance and several major utilities. Berkshire also holds major investments in Apple, Coca-cola, Bank of America, American Express and other stocks.