Nursing homesWhy Some Nursing Homes Are Better than Others at Protecting Residents and Staff from COVID-19

Published 11 June 2020

The coronavirus pandemic has posed a serious threat to the U.S. long-term care industry. A third of all deaths have been nursing home residents or workers – in some states it’s more than half. Anna Amirkhanyan, Austin McCrea, and Kenneth J Meier write in The Conversation that, yet, some long-term care facilities have managed to keep the virus at bay. For example, veterans’ homes in California have seen only a handful of cases among roughly 2,100 residents. And preliminary results of our research on COVID-19 cases and deaths in nursing homes also support the idea that some homes are doing better than others at protecting clients and staff from COVID-19. Why might this be?