November 13, 2020

Nothing Much Has Changed: COVID‐19 Nursing Home Cases and Deaths Follow Fall Surges

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Clinical Characteristics and Health Care Setting

Keywords (Tags): health care setting

• Surges in nursing home-associated SARS-CoV-2 infections occurred in hotspot states during the end of October. Data were collected from 778 facilities in Idaho, Montana, North and South Dakota, Utah, and Wisconsin regarding community spread, testing, and PPE and staffing shortages. Across the six states, weekly cases among staff members tripled from September to October and cases among residents quadrupled. By the end of the study period, one in five nursing homes reported PPE shortages, and one in four reported staff shortages. The authors suggest that mitigation efforts thus far have been insufficient to change the trajectory of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in nursing home communities.

Konetzka and Gorges. (Nov 12, 2020). Nothing Much Has Changed: COVID‐19 Nursing Home Cases and Deaths Follow Fall Surges. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. https://doi.org/10.1111/jgs.16951