Nursing homes are coronavirus danger zones. They need more workers to help out

Ten elderly residents at a care center in Yucaipa. Seven residents at a Hayward nursing home. Six at a skilled nursing facility in Visalia. They are senior citizens who became infected with the coronavirus and died.

Clearly, one of the most dangerous places to be in California in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic is a nursing facility.

Serving elderly clients, most of whom have underlying health problems, the facilities are hot spots where the coronavirus infects, spreads and kills.

Besides harming the elderly clients, COVID-19 is sickening the workers who staff the facilities. It got so bad at one Riverside facility recently that the workers refused to show up for their shifts, and the patients had to be evacuated to other facilities.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday announced a focus on helping nursing facilities and care homes by sending more personal protective equipment to staff in worst-hit centers, as well as infectious disease specialists, to help manage outbreaks.

Kudos to Newsom for creating the California Health Corps last month in the drive to staff 50,000 more hospital beds with medical professionals during the pandemic.

But as the nursing home reports show, their need is acute for staffing, too. It is now time for a second wave of Health Corps to be enacted — entry-level staff who can be assigned to nursing homes to relieve sick or exhausted workers from their duties so crucial care can continue for infected residents.

Trauma at Redwood Springs

The Visalia outbreak is a case in point on how fast coronavirus can inflict its will on a highly vulnerable population.

On April 1, eight people at the Redwood Springs Healthcare Center tested positive for COVID-19 — six patients and two staff.

Eight days later, the outbreak had blown up to 76 people testing positive — 42 patients and 34 staff.

As of Monday, six patients had died, three of them within one 24-hour period. Seventy-one patients were positive for the disease; another 41 were staff.

The majority of the patients at Redwood Springs were over age 65 and had underlying health problems — two keys that public health experts have said make a person especially prone to getting infected with coronavirus.

The nursing facility has contributed to Tulare County having the highest number of cases in the central San Joaquin Valley, at 264, despite having less than half the population of Fresno County, its bigger neighbor to the north. As of Monday, Tulare County had 13 deaths — the most in the region including Fresno, Madera, Kings and Merced counties.

Hitting north and south

Nursing homes throughout the state have come under coronavirus’ impact.

In the Bay Area, seven patients had died at the Gateway Care and Rehabilitation Center in Hayward as of the end of last week. Forty residents tested positive, as did 25 staff. In Orinda, a second death occurred at a care center where 50 people tested positive.

Southern California has had the most cases of any region in California. The facility in the San Bernardino County city of Yucaipa had at least 94 confirmed cases as of the end of last week.

In Riverside, the Magnolia Rehabilitation and Nursing Center had to be closed and its 83 patients evacuated when staff refused to show up for shifts. Five employees and 34 patients had tested positive.

Nationwide problem

California is not alone in how coronavirus is hitting nursing facilities. More than 3,600 deaths nationwide have been linked to coronavirus outbreaks in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, an alarming rise in just the past two weeks, according to the latest count by The Associated Press.

The latest tally of at least 3,621 deaths is up from about 450 deaths just 10 days ago. But the AP notes that the true toll among the 1 million mostly frail and elderly people who live in such facilities is likely much higher because most state counts don’t include those who died without ever being tested for COVID-19.

Even before the coronavirus was identified, nursing homes had constant struggles with fighting infections. “The prevention and control of infection continues to be a widespread problem throughout the nursing home industry,” according to a Sacramento Bee investigation by Jason Pohl and Michael Finch II. “Approximately 82 percent of the nearly 1,200 nursing homes — 976 separate facilities — in California have been cited with some sort of infection prevention and control violation in the past two years.”

Staffing challenges

Nursing home workers generally earn low wages. A report in the Los Angeles Times showed how such employees often work at more than one facility to make ends meet. But that increases the danger of COVID-19 being spread.

It is imperative that Newsom provides nursing facilities with more additional temporary staff to give their regular workers some rest and allow those who are sick to stay home. A Health Corps 2.0 could do just that.

Otherwise, the risk is nursing homes will remain danger zones for elderly people with little to no other options for where they can live. And overworked staff run the risk of getting sick, guaranteeing disruption in care for patients, and the continuation of an illness all Californians badly want to end.

This story was originally published April 14, 2020 at 9:42 AM.