By: JV Staff
According to data analyzed by the New York Times, at least 54,000 of the over 125,500 confirmed coronavirus deaths in the U.S. are residents and workers at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities for seniors.
According to a report on TheHill.com web site, the vulnerability of nursing homes was evident early in the pandemic, as older people are more susceptible to contracting COVID-19 due to the fact that they often have underlying health conditions, co-morbidities and compromised immune systems.
TheHill reported that the virus also spreads easily from person-to-person contact, which is hard to avoid in a nursing home setting where residents depend on staff and interact with other residents.
The Times data found that in 24 states most coronavirus deaths are linked to nursing homes. In Minnesota, New York and New Hampshire, more than 70 percent of coronavirus-related deaths are linked to nursing homes, according to the Hill report.
The Times, which has compiled a database of COVID-19 cases, reports that about 12,000 nursing homes and care centers have been linked to 282,000 cases. Of these cases, 54,000 people have died, according to a report on the dailywire.com web site.
The NYT analysis also found that the fatality rate from nursing homes is 17 percent, compared to the 5 percent general fatality rate.
Over 10 percent of all coronavirus cases in the U.S. are also linked to nursing homes. Of the over 2.5 million cases in the U.S., 282,000 are residents and workers at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, the Times data shows, according to TheHill report.
The dailywire.com reported that while about 2.5 million have tested positive for coronavirus in the United States, CDC Director Robert Redfield estimated Thursday that as many as 24 million Americans have been infected, a projection based on antibody data, according to The Washington Post. This would push the national fatality rate lower.
The Times offers the following caveats about comparing data between states and facilities: “The federal government, states, counties and facilities report different portions of long-term care data, so exercise caution when comparing facilities or aggregated data in different states.” The news agency also suggests that the nursing home data for New York isn’t reliable, as “the case count is often the same as the death count because the state only reports the number of people who have died but not the number of overall infections.”
The Daily Caller has also noted New York’s coronavirus transparency problem, having reported back in mid-May that the health department was no longer linking coronavirus deaths to nursing homes if the resident died at the hospital as of, roughly, April 28.
