The number of reported deaths in nursing homes and assisted living facilities have made up nearly half of all CCP virus deaths in the US.
Some are saying it’s because several states allowed for infected people to be admitted to nursing homes.
Brenda Avadian, founder of The Caregiver’s Voice said employees who might have the virus, but go to work anyway, have also endangered the elderly.
“They will come to work regardless, even if they have a slight sniffle, and it could be the onset of COVID, they’ll still come to work because they need to earn wages to support their families,” Avadian said.
And if symptomatic workers do stay home, a new problem emerges where some of the residents will be cared for while others will not.
“It’s a double-edged sword, really. I mean, imagine your own grandmomma living in a nursing home today with limited staff and she’s disoriented. How would she cope, how would you as a family cope when you can’t even visit, some of the homes still have restrictions,” she said.
Caretakers earn about $15 dollars an hour. According to Brenda, the low income combined with excessive work has caused for very poor conditions in nursing homes.
She believes that increasing pay and providing other incentives will improve work experience as well as the residents’ standard of living.
“These are the things we can do with limited staff during the coronavirus until we finally see an end to this, have some kind of vaccine or just something where few people are being diagnosed and dying from this,” she said.
Brenda also suggested that the government reduce oversight and paperwork so that caregivers have more time to look after residents.