Tag: COVID-19

US CDC begins agency-wide changes after pandemic failures

Volume 400, Issue 10365
19 November 2022 

 

WORLD REPORT  An independent review made several recommendations for improving the public health agency. Susan Jaffe reports from Washington, DC.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is on a mission to reorganise and modernise itself, so that its mistakes during the pandemic will not happen again. The aim is to make the nation’s leading disease detective more nimble and accountable, and fortify its role as public health protector. But although some changes have been made, progress will be limited without support from Congress. [Continued here.] 
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After pandemic ravaged nursing homes, new state laws protect residents

So far, 23 states have passed more than 70 new pandemic-related provisions affecting nursing home operations. 

By Susan Jaffe | KAISER  HEALTH  NEWS | August 17, 2021 |  This story also ran in

When the coronavirus hit Martha Leland’s Connecticut nursing home last year, she and dozens of other residents contracted the disease while the facility was on lockdown. Twenty-eight residents died, including her roommate.

“The impact of not having friends and family come in and see us for a year was totally devastating,” she said. “And then, the staff all bound up with the masks and the shields on, that too was very difficult to accept.” She summed up the experience in one word: “scary.”

But under a law Connecticut enacted in June, nursing home residents will be able to designate an “essential support person” who can help

take care of a loved one even during a public health emergency. Connecticut legislators also approved laws this year giving nursing home residents free internet access and digital devices for virtual visits and allowing video cameras in their rooms so family or friends can monitor their care.

Similar benefits are not required by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the federal agency that oversees nursing homes and pays for most of the care they provide. But states can impose additional requirements when those federal rules are insufficient or don’t exist.  And that’s exactly what many are doing, spurred by the virus that hit the frail elderly hardest. [Continued at Kaiser Health News and USA Today] 

 

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Chiquita Brooks-LaSure: innovative US federal health director

Volume 398, Issue 10300
14 August 2021

 

PROFILE  
Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, President Joe Biden’s choice to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, presides over an agency with a US$1 trillion budget that provides health insurance to more than 154 million people. Tackling health-care inequities is one of her top priorities. “These disparities have long existed, but COVID-19 has illuminated them in a way that is really unprecedented”, she said. [Full story here.]

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Nursing Homes Fined for COVID Infection Control Lapses

By Susan Jaffe  | Contributing Writer | MedPageToday  | November 25, 2020

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has fined 218 nursing homes more than $17.6 million for the most serious infection control violations that put residents in “immediate jeopardy,” conditions CMS believes are likely to seriously injure or kill them.

More than 91,000 residents and staff of long-term care facilities have died after contracting COVID-19 — about 40% of the total deaths in the U.S., according to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis. …Frustrated by repeated violations of infection control requirements during the pandemic, CMS raised the penalty amounts and announced a crackdown on egregious offenders in August. But the hard-line approach doesn’t seem to have produced the intended results. (Click here for a list of nursing homes that were fined.)  [Continued here.]

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Whether By Luck Or Safety Protocols, Some Nursing Homes Remain COVID-19 Free

BY SUSAN JAFFE  |  CONNECTICUT HEALTH INVESTIGATIVE TEAM   |  JUNE 15,2020           

The coronavirus has decimated many of the nation’s nursing homes, and elderly, chronically ill residents of these facilities account for 64% of the state’s 4,201 death toll. They are roughly 100 times more likely to die of the virus than other people in the state.

So, the fact that some 41 of Connecticut’s 214 nursing homes have managed to keep out the virus, according to an analysis by C-HIT, is both remarkable and mystifying. Did they just get lucky?

This article also ran on Connecticut Public Radio.

Administrators at several COVID-19-free facilities use the word “fortunate” to describe a situation they acknowledge could change at any time. [Continued here, with map and table of COVID-19 free nursing homes.]

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Hundreds Died of COVID at NYC Nursing Homes With Spotless Infection Inspections

By Susan Jaffe   |    THE CITY    |    May 27, 2020     

More than 600 residents have died from COVID-19 at 25 New York City nursing homes that received clean bills of health for controlling the spread of infections, state Department of Health inspection reports obtained by THE CITY show.

Those facilities include homes with some of the highest coronavirus death tolls in the nation — including the Sapphire Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Flushing, which reports 54 residents died of confirmed or presumed COVID….

At the Franklin Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing, also in Flushing, 60 residents — nearly one in five — succumbed to the virus. Its May 4 inspection report found no problems.

Also passing its May 11 infection-control inspection was New York State Veterans Home in St. Albans, Queens. Staff there previously told THE CITY that the state Health Department-run home failed to separate COVID-positive and uninfected residents, something that was a violation at other facilities….

“It’s very shocking that at the apex of this pandemic, our inspectors went in and reported that that there’s nothing out of the ordinary when it’s clear that the infection rate had spread,” said Assemblymember Ron Kim (D-Queens), whose district includes Sapphire and the Franklin Center.   [continued here].

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Federal Regulators split on antimalarials for COVID-19

Volume 395    Number 10231     
11 April 2020                          
WORLD REPORT   US and French authorities have authorised the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, but the EU regulator and WHO say the science doesn’t support the decision. Susan Jaffe reports. 
With no “adequate, approved and available” alternative, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is allowing the use of the antimalarial drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine to treat coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

The FDA’s emergency use authorisation (EUA) issued last week gives physicians the option to prescribe the drugs, which President Donald Trump has recommended. However, both drugs are unproven and untested for COVID-19, and have rare but potentially deadly side-effects.  The decision bypassed the usual drug approval process including doubleblind, placebo-controlled clinical trials, stoking a worldwide debate about whether the drugs are appropriate for treating the disease.

“I think it was resorted to more out of a sense of desperation”, said Joseph Masci, an infectious disease specialist and director of global health at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, a borough of New York City, which is at the centre of the epidemic in the USA. “It is just an indication of how sudden and massive this outbreak has been.” [Continued here.]  

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