The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has strongly encouraged nursing homes to increase their efforts in controlling COVID-19 inside facilities after the number of residents infected reached a record high, and as new deaths have started rising once again.
Arizona is close to reopening nursing homes to visitors after restricting nearly all in-person visits since mid-March in an effort to control the spread of COVID-19. Governor Doug Ducey formed a task force in late July made up of long-term care providers, families and lawmakers, to develop guidelines for the safe return of visitors. According to AZ Central, in Maricopa County alone, long-term care residents account for 33% of the county’s total COVID-19 deaths. More than 3,500 residents and 2,000 staffers have been infected and more than 930 residents have died.
In the early spring, the number of virus cases in nursing homes was about 11,000 a week, which dropped to 6,319 cases by the end of June. CMS strike force teams (comprised of CMS physicians, infection control specialists from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and CDC epidemiologists), have found “significant deficiencies in infection control practices” that have pushed up weekly cases to about 12,000 by the end of July. After weekly deaths steadily declined from a high of 3,130 at the end of May, they once again appear to be on the rise, reaching 1,706 for the last week of July, according to MedPageToday.
CMS has distributed most of the point-of-care COVID-19 test kits it promised to nursing homes and asked manufacturers to direct all of their point-of-care tests to the nursing homes. The agency has also urged the laboratories to give nursing homes priority when processing the virus tests.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently announced the use of the Defense Production Act to bolster orders of point-of-care coronavirus testing units and supplies for the nation’s nursing homes. The initiative remains on track to reach those 14,000 approved facilities by next month, with more than 3,500 already distributed along with 1.3 million tests, according to Skilled Nursing News. The FDA also placed 20 kinds of gowns, gloves, masks, ventilators, and COVID-19 testing supplies on a list of medical devices that were in short supply due to increased demand. Some nursing homes have only a three to five days of supply of personal protective equipment (PPE), including gowns and gloves.
AHCA/NCAL president and CEO Mark Parkinson said,
Our focus should be on getting a handle on the amount of spread in the surrounding community and prioritizing nursing homes for ongoing resources. When less people in the community have COVID-19, it is less likely to end up in a nursing home.
As states and the federal government move to mandate COVID-19 testing inside nursing homes, whose patients are deemed highly vulnerable to infection and severe complications, several industry officials have said they hoped to use the tests on asymptomatic people. But many states restrict the use of antigen tests or still require lab-based testing because of accuracy concerns, according to Modern Healthcare. The antigen tests are intended for patients with symptoms, calling into question how valuable the tests would be for broad screening purposes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 40% of infected people may be asymptomatic.
Read the article from AZ Central
Read the article from MedPageToday
Read the article from Skilled Nursing News
Read the article from Modern Healthcare
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