Nursing homes

Visitation can resume at adult care facilities if they have no new confirmed COVID-19 cases among residents or staff for a 14-day period, reduced from 28 days, the New York State Department of Health announced yesterday.

A banner hanging near the main entrance of Acadia Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Riverhead proclaims, "Dear Visitors...WELCOME BACK! We missed you!" Though the banner remains up, visitation has been shut down — just five days after it was reinstated for the first time since mid-March.

A requirement that nursing homes must be free of COVID-19 infections for at least 28 days means that many facilities won't soon be opening doors to visitors.

The report released Monday concludes that infections among nursing home staff and transmission of the virus from staff to residents played the predominant role in the spread of the virus and fatalities among nursing home residents — not hospital admissions.

New York's policy guidance actively put long-term care residents at risk, Rep. Lee Zeldin argues. He calls for answers on the state's high death toll among long-term care residents.

Assemblyman Anthony Palumbo questions the role of state policy in contributing to the death toll of the virus in New York’s long-term care facilities, which today stands at 5,516 residents — about one-fourth of the state’s total COVID-19 deaths.

Hospitals in New York are now banned from discharging patients to nursing homes unless they have first tested negative for COVID-19. Officials denied the new order walks back a March 25 directive requiring nursing homes to accept COVID-positive persons.

New data released by the state health department show nearly 5,000 long-term care residents in New York have been killed by the coronavirus.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the investigation yesterday, as COVID-19 deaths in New York State’s long-term care facilities continue to mount. The virus has killed 3,540 residents in long-term care facilities — roughly one in four of the 15,740 deaths in the state since the first COVID-19 fatality was reported in New York on March 14.

Nursing homes across the state — ordered to admit COVID patients from hospitals, told they should not test residents with COVID symptoms and facing severe shortages of protective equipment for their staff — now face scrutiny from state officials over why the outbreak has claimed so many lives in their facilities.