21 veterans die at Massachusetts veterans home from Covid 19

[eastcoast_bsc]

The Vietnam war veteran in the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home’s dementia unit had been coughing for days. Finally, his coronavirus test results arrived: positive.

But instead of isolating the 78-year-old patient to protect the home’s other elderly veterans from the contagion, managers said they were short-staffed and needed to combine his unit with another. That left about 40 men crowded in a wing, with nearly a dozen sleeping in a dining room, according to five employees of the state-run elder care facility.

That decision, the employees said, was one of several grave missteps that allowed the virus to race virtually unchecked through a state-run home that had been placed on high alert to protect its elderly, infirm residents against a pandemic.

Managers also ordered caregivers to move between the infected unit and others without adequate protective gear, and threatened to discipline workers or dock their pay if they called in sick, the employees said.

The results were tragic, if all too predictable. Since late March, 21 veterans have died at the home, one of the largest fatal outbreaks in Massachusetts, and a grim echo of the contagion at a Kirkland, Wash., nursing home that killed at least 37 people.

In Holyoke, 15 of the deaths have officially been linked to COVID-19 to date, and at least 59 more veterans and 18 staff have tested positive. Results for dozens of others are pending.

“They infected the whole floor because they were understaffed — they made stupid decisions,” said a caregiver who worked in the infected unit and, like the other employees, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

Years of understaffing, mismanagement set deadly stage for coronavirus outbreak at Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, employees say - The Boston Globe

 

[Michie]

Lord have mercy!