State: Nursing homes prepared for second COVID-19 wave

BOSTON — It’s a staggering statistic. Of the 9,630 deaths from Covid-19 in Massachusetts, about 2/3 of them, or 6,209 people, have been nursing home residents.

“One out of seven residents of nursing homes have died during this pandemic,” said Rep. Ruth Balser, D-Newton, who co-chaired a virtual hearing Tuesday on Long-Term-Care facility preparedness for a resurgent pandemic. “We’re all very worried about a second surge and we want to make sure that those who live in our nursing homes will be safe.”

Six months ago, many were not safe.

“The 24/7 care settings can allow a virus to spread quickly in an industry that has historically struggled with infection control and staffing,” said MaryLou Sudders, Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Sudders said the Baker Administration concentrated on Covid testing and stricter infection control to help bring things under control.

“We performed over a thousand audits -- in-site, onsite audits -- during May and June and each facility was audited at least twice. And we saw dramatic improvement in decreases in cases and decreases in deaths.”

In fact, Sudders said since April, Covid-19 cases in nursing homes have dropped 99% while deaths have dropped 94%.

“I think we are prepared, given what we have learned. as we come into the fall,” Sudders said.

Nursing home residents who survived the first wave of Covid-19 suffered in other ways, family members told the joint committee on Elder Affairs.

Rhiana Kohl’s husband developed early onset Alzheimer’s at age 47. He lived in a nursing home in walking distance to their house. “And I literally found out that visits weren’t allowed by showing up and just seeing a notice on the door,” she said.

Some family members are pushing for rapid testing of residents, staff and visitors. But Sudders says the time for that isn’t right -- since antigen testing is the ‘rapid testing’ now available “It is not the gold standard diagnostic testing and there are significant challenges both with false positives and false negatives,” she said.

“I can’t wait to have a rapid system that is accurate,” she said. "But antigen testing in and of itself is not going to protect residents and staff from Covid-19.

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