Pennsylvania Health secretary defends pandemic response in nursing homes

Pennsylvania’s health secretary on Friday defended her ncy’s handling of COVID-19 outbreak inside nursing homes and personal care facilities that account for almost 70% of state’s nearly 6,600 fatalities.

Criticism from Republicans has been focused on state’s policy that sent recovering patients back to nursing homes after being treated in hospitals. policy was described as “dely” in a letter sent Thursday to state’s attorney general, signed by most of Pennsylvania’s Republican members of Congress.

Levine’s ncy has said it was following a March directive from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Center for Medicare Services that nursing homes “should mit any individuals that y would rmally mit to ir facility, including individuals from hospitals where a case of COVID-19 was/is present.”

practice appears to have been routine across states, and nursing home has stepped forward to say that it was forced to take a COVID-19 patient against its wishes.

Those patients have t been main source of COVID-19 infections inside facilities, Levine said — she thinks a more likely culprit is homes’ own employees.

Levine said numbers of nursing home and long-term care facility cases is proportional to population density of counties where y are located, and cited acemic research that backs up her ory about how coronavirus got inside homes.

Levine said she was unsure why some facilities have been far more successful than ors in limiting dam once virus got re.

“We don’t kw, specifically,” Levine said, offering as ories that larger homes with more have been better able to devote room it takes to isolate infected patients.

In a half-hour interview that focused on state’s handling of pandemic’s effects on nursing homes, Levine conceded that full “baseline” testing of all staff and residents in 694 nursing homes, w expected to be finished by late July, has gone too slowly.

“Some were less efficient, in terms of working on it,” Levine said.

health secretary said some care homes have t been interested in her ncy’s assistance.

“I can’t be specific, but we have worked with facilities that have been less than welcoming to our support,” she said. “We have h to push many times to be able to eng in m and to take ownership of issues.”

state attorney general’s office anunced last month it h opened a criminal investigation into several nursing homes, related to neglect of patients and residents.

Levine said re have been some problems with nursing home employees calling off job, but ded that most of m were mselves sick with COVID-19 or caring for infected family members.

All nursing home facilities w have sufficient stocks of personal protective equipment, Levine said. Long-term care facilities have so far received more than 306,000 gowns, 336,000 face shields, 1 million, 2.8 million N95 masks and 1.1 million surgical masks.

More visits from nresidents to people in nursing homes and or long-term care facilities will be permitted soon under new guidance that will be anunced in near future.