“When Covid-19 Hit, Many Elderly Were Left to Die,” by Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Matt Apuzzo and Monika Pronczuk, New York Times

Quote:

“Of all the missteps by governments during the coronavirus pandemic, few have had such an immediate and devastating impact as the failure to protect nursing homes. Tens of thousands of older people died — casualties not only of the virus, but of more than a decade of ignored warnings that nursing homes were vulnerable. Public health officials around the world excluded nursing homes from their pandemic preparedness plans and omitted residents from the mathematical models used to guide their responses. In recent months, the coronavirus outbreak in the United States has dominated global attention, as the world’s richest nation blundered its way into the world’s largest death toll. Some 40 percent of those fatalities have been linked to long-term-care facilities. But even now, European countries lead the world in per capita deaths, in part because of what happened inside their nursing homes.”

 

 

LTC Comment (from Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform):

Government single-payer health systems didn’t save nursing homes in Europe from Covid-19.