New Needs When Nursing Homes Close

Last week brought a glimmer of hope but also bad news for nursing homes. The first nursing home residents—in West Virginia and Florida—received the COVID-19 vaccine and were able to leave their rooms after months of isolation.

The bad news was two-fold. There is a spike in COVID cases and deaths in nursing homes, with nearly 20,000 cases and an estimated 5,000 deaths per week. And nursing home residents in their 80s are now over 600 times more likely to die from a coronavirus infection than someone in their 20s (see Nursing Homes, Ravaged . . .