Posted on 07/28/2020 3:26:24 PM PDT by lightman
Every skilled nursing home in Pennsylvania has met the July 24 deadline for testing all residents and employees for COVID-19, the state said Tuesday.
Completing that round of tests is a key part of the plan for allowing in-person visits to nursing homes something that hasnt happened in Pennsylvania since early March, and which experts say has grave medical consequences of its own.
If a facility has zero infections among residents and staff, it can move into the first stage of a three-stage plan for resuming visits. It takes one or more additional two-week periods of no infections before the facility can allow visitors.
Even then, visits can only take place if the facility also feels it has sufficient supplies of things such as protective equipment to prevent spread of COVID-19. And the visits take place only by appointment and facilities can impose additional controls.
Beyond that, it takes only one infection to send a facility back to stage one, resulting in another multi-week wait before it can allow visitors again.
Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine said Tuesday that, with all the variables, she couldnt provide a firm estimate of when a facility with zero infections as of July 24 would be able to accept visitors.
She advised people who have a family member in a nursing home to call the facility to find out when visits will resume.
The July 24 deadline applies only to skilled nursing facilities. Personal care and assisted living facilities have until August 31 to complete testing of residents and staff. However, they can carry out the testing sooner and, if they have zero infections, can move into stage one of the plan for resuming visitation, Levine said.
The health department on Tuesday couldnt provide details on how many nursing homes registered zero infections, a spokesman said.
The main purpose of the so-called universal testing is to keep COVID out of long term care facilities and identify employees who are carrying it but have no symptoms, which experts say it the main way COVID gets into the facilities.
In Pennsylvania, COVID has killed more than 4,800 people in nursing, assisted living or personal care facilities nearly 70% of the states death toll. However, the death toll has slowed greatly as facilities have overcome things like protective equipment shortages and developed better policies for controlling infections.
However, the ban on visitors and the resulting isolation has its own serious heath toll, experts say, with the isolation contributing to ills including depression.
Some advocates argue the consequences of the isolation have become dangerously high group dining and activities also are on hold and the state and facilities have had enough time to resume visits while keeping residents safe from COVID. Moreover, COVID is denying countless long term care residents and their loved one of the opportunity to enjoy the residents final months together, with facilities typically allowing only end-of-life visits.
Pennsylvania has about 45,000 people living in about 1,200 personal care and assisted living facilities, about 80,000 living in 693 skilled nursing facilities.
Meanwhile, Levine and other experts have stressed that the prevalence of infections inside long term care facilities is a product of the level of infections in the surrounding, and strict controls are the only way to keep them out.
I know that its a really difficult balance, but we cannot introduce COVID-19 into the facility, Levine said.
Facilities will have to periodically re-test all residents and staff. The frequency will depend on things including the prevalence of COVID infections in the county where its located.
Dr. (Dickless) "Rachel" Levine--the face of Coronarvirus to Pennsylvanians.
The she/he/it's mommy was whisked out of a long term care facility JUST BEFORE flooding such places with COVID patients.
68% of PA COVID deaths have occurred in LTC--no state, not even NY--has so high a percentage.
Pennsylvania Ping!
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Here in GA family members still can’t enter assisted living facilities and nursing homes.
It’s prudent. Protect the vulnerable. One case would spread like wildfire.
Same here in Texas
They can, however, go to the person’s back door and talk thru the glass(or by phone).
Only Visitor will be the Angel of Death or Jesus, or both.
Only Visitor will be the Angel of Death or Jesus, or both.
If more of those old folk die before the election every last one of them in the Philadelphia area will join the other deceased and vote multiple times for Biden.
Yep, here in MT, a Billings nursing home is really being hit hard. Close to half of the state's cases.
If they follow the example of warren wilheim it will be after they all are permanent democrats
I assume that you meant this in a humorous way, but it's actually true. My mother-in-law passed away in a Personal Care facility at the end of May. We had not been allowed to see her, and she was clearly depressed and did not really understand what was going on. After she died, they told us we could "see her" if we wanted. So sad, so wrong!
BTW -- I am allowed in to work in that same facility and most other Personal Care and Independent Living Senior communities in the area (I am a Senior move manager) but I still could not see her even if I was in the building, cleared by staff and properly masked.
As soon as the man beast health commissioner finishes of the elderly
As soon as the man beast health commissioner finishes of the elderly
One of Mrs. L’s distant cousins died of COVID in a LTC; mercifully, they allowed each of her adult children to visit during her final hours for no longer than 10 minutes each.
"Only I can do that".
This mentally deranged, evil POS.
Thank God I didn't have anyone in these homes or I would have been on national news.
Has anyone in this moronic generation tried teleconferencing for talking to people in nursing homes? It’s cheap and easy now in areas with high speed Internet service.
I’m sorry I guess I have a different opinion than many here...most of those in nursing homes have lived long lives and most would not want to end up dying all alone without seeing their significant other or their children. I am guessing most who have family would rather still be able to see their family, touch their loved ones hand, and take the chance versus potentially dying without saying goodbye or spending their last few months completely alone.
I know a husband and wife who have been married for 65 years. He got hurt and was put into a nursing home. Now they are worried he may die and she cannot even be with him his last few months of their life together. It’s pathetic...suit the people up, put on a special mask but let them in. If nurses and doctors can be suited up and be safe around people then why, out of sheer kindness, can they not do the same in this situation?
Many elderly people are not computer or technology savvy. A simple Jitterbug cell phone was the limit for my M-i-L. Even the new Xfinity or Verizon talk-to remotes can confound them. Our average client is age 88 and we move few computers or laptops, alltho’ it has gotten more common to see them in the last couple of years.
Setting up & responding to something as simple as a video call or Zoom meeting may be beyond their capabilities, esp. if they have cognitive decline or trouble with eyesight or hearing. And aides & nurses would be unlikely to help with that sort of thing, esp. if it meant setting up a new system, they just don’t have the time.
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