(Snippets from the frontline)
COVID-19: The nursing home “hotspot”
As a geriatric physician, I have visited nursing homes for over thirty years. COVID-19 is a highly contagious virus inflicting havoc and death over senior healthcare facilities.
Statistics reveal nursing homes are a “hotspot” for large clusters of coronavirus, but as a doctor, I am not surprised at the carnage. We can, and must do better.
That is why I ask local, county, and state authorities to convene a “Summit” and bring together a combat force of information, knowledge, and ideas to totally eradicate this virus from the battlefield.
Elected government officials with Public Health personnel need assistance, so we must now draw from doctors, nurses, medical educators, and well-informed senior organizations that can load ammo into our weapons.
Collaborating, organizing, and launching an offense of testing, isolating, distancing, disinfecting, PPEs, and gathering up-to-date and timely data is necessary. This must be coordinated at a “Summit”, then widely implemented at a county and state level.
If we can control this virus in nursing homes, when the next wave hits in the Fall, then spread can be controlled leading to remedies that might reconcile future “hotspots.”
We need a “Summit” now to fight this war!
Gene Uzawa Dorio, M.D.
I don’t think having the Blue Angels do a fly-over for our healthcare workers is enough gratitude. See where this goes when the pandemic is in the rear view mirror and the hospitals and the facilities return to low wages, lousy break times and short staffing. Symbolism in place of fair pay for healthcare workers will not solve our healthcare issues.
I have witnessed and documented practices in nursing homes, after living bedside with my husband through four of them. In connection with the “virus” none of the news reporters seem to acknowledge that many nursing home healthcare workers actually work in more than one nursing home at a time. Low wages force many to work in more than one facility; often visiting two facilities in the same day which may be causing a higher spread.
I’ve seen healthcare workers pick up surgical gloves off the floor after dropping them on the floor and putting them back on when a glove dispensary is only inches away.