USA Today article mentions that 16,000, or about 25% of all USA deaths from COVID-19, have occurred at nursing homes. This is staggering! In New Jersey, they reported 86% of long term care facilities have infections, and Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Colorado over 50% of all COVID-19 deaths are from nursing homes!
About 2 million Americans live in long-term care facilities (about 0.6% of population), so 25% of deaths is really a staggering number! Lack of PPE and testing is cited as a major concern, and really needs to be addressed! This week (finally) the federal government has stated it is providing supplies and testing to these facilities.
This underscores one of the key (and under-discussed) characteristic of this pandemic -- SUPER-SPREAD events -- how can we realign our society to prevent the potential of these super spread events and environments while not completely disrupting societal activities?
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