According to estimates, nursing home residents and workers now comprise between 30% and 40% of all COVID-19 related deaths in the United States.
Nursing Homes Are Ground Zero for COVID-19
TUESDAY, May 26, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- No matter where you live, nursing homes and assisted living facilities are now lethal centers for COVID-19 in the United States.
Im fact, nursing home residents and workers now comprise between 30% and 40% of all COVID-19 related deaths in the United States, according to estimates.
The care centers serve as a "well of infection" for the coronavirus that will continue to feed the ongoing epidemic, said Donald Taylor, director of the Duke University Social Science Research Institute in Durham, N.C.
"I believe if we don't manage to control the epidemic within nursing homes, we're not going to control it in the United States," Taylor said.
He and other experts are calling for a renewed emphasis on nursing homes as a way of tackling the COVID-19 pandemic, using many of the same infection control tools needed throughout the nation's communities.