And get trained staffing levels high enough to institute and maintain infection control.
They just need to invest in new decks of cards.
Just three days before the first cases were confirmed, in a resident and an employee at Life Care Center, in Kirkland, the facility held a party last week.
‘We were all eating, drinking, singing and clapping to the music,’ said Pat McCauley, who was there visiting a friend.
‘In hindsight, it was a real germ-fest.’
Dozens of residents and visitors were packed together in a room, where they passed plates of sausage, rice and king cake around, and sang as a Dixieland band played ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ at the purple-and-gold-festooned Mardi Gras party last week.
Worried visitors told how the festivities took place despite the backdrop of a global health crisis and CDC officials warning that it was not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’ the virus would be active in US communities...
Factual presentation of events, until the last paragraph full of fearmongering.
This same home was cited last year for failure to maintain proper anti-flu procedures. It seems to have been clean enough, but probably during the flu-season, they had too much access by family members, children, etc.
People who have compromised or fragile immune systems - ranging from the very elderly to people undergoing chemo or simply people with other pre-existing illnesses - need to be protected against too much public contact. They don’t need to be locked up in solitary, because I’m sure most of them would then rather be dead!
But in a setting like this, I think probably more caution, especially during flu season, would be in order. Not only with group events, but with family visits, etc.
Good golly. They couldn’t have done a better job spreading the virus if they’d used a crop-dusting airplane to spray corona virus liquid over the area. Having had parents in those places, it brings back memories of signing in, facemasks, “soiled” undergarments and crowded “day rooms”. These types of senior centers are just infected petri dishes waiting to happen.
“All these homes need to stop these events , visitors, group dining , and test all the staff . No St Patty Day events this year .”
Hopefully they will now. But still, tough to blame them, with all the happy-talk coming out of CDC and other branches of government. Heck, even the hot area in Washington State doesn’t (yet) see any value in closing their schools, even though they’ve told the parents to work from home, if they can.
Laissez les bons temps rouler!
I just got an email from my church that said quoted CDC guidelines:
“Amid a coronavirus outbreak in the United States, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is encouraging older people and people with severe chronic medical conditions to “stay at home as much as possible.”
I am an “older” person (70) but will be attending my church and my Bible Study Fellowship class this Sunday.
“Throw me something mister!”
It ought to be common sense to restrict access into hese retirement/nursing homes, but it seems the parties must go on. A cloistered setting with compromised residents is an extremely conducive environment for infectious pathogens to spread and take hold. Just yesterday, Maryland reported an infected cruise ship carrier had visited a Rockville nursing home so look for another cluster to develop in Maryland.
This is silly. My father in law is a resident at Life Care and I’ve seen first hand the kind of events being criticized. We’re talking about normal nursing home rec-center kind of stuff that all good nursing homes do to provide quality of life experiences for the residents. As far as nursing homes go, Life Care a really nice one. It’s ready to find stuff to criticise with the benefit of hindsight.