Number of new cases in nursing homes climbed to 8,628 for the week of July 19
FRIDAY, Aug. 14, 2020 (HealthDay News) — The novel coronavirus is surging once more in U.S. nursing homes, where it killed tens of thousands at the start of the pandemic.
Federal data cited by two long-term care associations this week illustrated the troubling trend: The number of new cases in nursing homes bottomed out at 5,468 during the week of June 21, but it climbed to 8,628 for the week of July 19, the Washington Post reported. That is a 58 percent increase, which roughly parallels the rise in overall U.S. cases during that period.
On Thursday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned that more COVID-19 deaths at nursing homes and assisted-living facilities may be coming, even as total caseloads have begun to decline. Florida has seen an outbreak of COVID-19 cases this summer and has a large elderly population, the Post reported. “Over the next couple weeks, I’m concerned of seeing kind of a tail, where we start to see some of these long-term-care deaths,” DeSantis said at a forum in Tallahassee.
In a different analysis of 35 states, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that cases in long-term care facilities jumped 11 percent in the two weeks ending July 10. But in 23 hot spot states, they rose 18 percent compared with just 4 percent in 12 states that had the virus under better control, the Post reported.
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