Nursing homesFailure to Count COVID-19 Nursing Home Deaths Could Dramatically Skew U.S. Numbers
With the clustering of people who are frail and have multiple other illnesses like heart disease, stroke, chronic lung disease and diabetes, the risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19 is much higher in nursing homes. Yet, the United States does not know how many people are dying from COVID-19 in part because the government is only just now requiring nursing homes to start reporting numbers of presumed and confirmed cases and deaths to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Thomas Perls writes that the missing cases could dramatically skew the national death count.
In New York state, 19 nursing homes have each reported 20 or more deaths from COVID-19. A nursing home in New Jersey reported 70 deaths out of its 500 residents. In the words of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, these homes have become a “feeding frenzy” for the virus and “the single biggest fear.” Thomas Perls writes in The Conversation that with the clustering of people who are frail and have multiple other illnesses like heart disease, stroke, chronic lung disease and diabetes, the risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19 is much higher in nursing homes.
He adds:
Yet, the United States does not know how many people are dying from COVID-19 in part because the government is only just now requiring nursing homes to start reporting numbers of presumed and confirmed cases and deaths to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The missing cases could dramatically skew the national death count. When France started reporting death data from some of its nursing homes, the daily COVID-19 fatality numbers almost doubled.
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By the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest estimate, the U.S. has about 15,600 nursing homes with some 1.3 million residents. One quarter of those residents, about 425,000, are over the age of 80. In Massachusetts, the average age of death in confirmed COVID-19 cases is 82.
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One indication of the high death toll from nursing homes comes from Belgium. The country has the highest per capita rate of COVID-19 deaths in the world – 57 per 100,000 people – primarily because officials there include nursing homes’ COVID-19 deaths in the national count and they are including both presumed and proven cases. Like Massachusetts, more than half of COVID-19 deaths in Belgium occur outside of hospitals.
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To get an accurate count, veterans’ homes, assisted living centers, group homes and other senior housing facilities must be required to report their past and current COVID-19 cases and deaths, as well.
