Janell Roberts was stunned when she opened a box of personal protective equipment shipped by the state Department of Social Services to her home care client last week. West Haven resident Michael Whelan has four aides, including Roberts, come to his home every day to help with all his needs including bathing and meal preparation.
When the pandemic struck, the majority of the nation’s nursing homes were losing money, some were falling into disrepair, and others were struggling to attract new occupants, leaving many of them ill equipped to protect workers and residents as the coronavirus raged through their properties. Their troubled state was years in the making. Decades of ownership
As Connecticut looks to gradually reopen some businesses this month, public health care workers raised concerns Wednesday that the state could see a resurgence of coronavirus infections in the fall, leading some to suggest the opening could be too soon. “This is a game of attrition right now, and we may not be winning this
Last summer – months before the novel coronavirus began its deadly race across Connecticut – dozens of residents at a Waterbury nursing home started wheezing. Some had trouble breathing. Others became congested. The “respiratory outbreak” at Abbott Terrace Health Center touched 33 elderly or disabled people in all six units at the sprawling, red-brick complex.
Fifty-two years ago, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously asserted the dignity of all work, he seemed to foresee this moment when it would become so clear that the labor of everyone — farmworkers, grocers, delivery drivers, caregivers, nursing assistants — was essential to all of our health and well-being. “One day,”
The federal and state response to COVID-19 in nursing homes is riddled with economic — and racial — inequities that are taking a greater toll in deaths and illnesses than government officials have disclosed, Connecticut’s largest healthcare workers’s union charged Friday. “Poor people, black people, Latino people, are denied the same level of care, the
COVID-19
There have been 35 deaths from COVID-19 at Kimberly Hall North nursing home in Windsor, nearly four times the state’s official number for the facility, as the coronavirus continues to decimate elderly residents of Connecticut’s long-term care facilities. “There’s truly a devastating number of deaths and cases,” said Dr. Richard Feifer, senior vice president and
COVID-19
About half the nursing homes in the state – 108 – have had at least one case of COVID-19 and it has left workers feeling scared and not prepared. Outside the State Capitol in Hartford on Thursday, there was a loud and urgent message being sent to state leaders. “We need the protective gear that
Congressional Democrats are trying to add $13 per hour hazard payments for frontline health care workers up to a total of $25,000 in the next coronavirus relief package, along with $15,000 incentives for people who join the medical workforce surge during the pandemic. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said a so-called Heroes Fund could compensate
by Lisa Backus | Mar 30, 2020 11:30am If Lynda Frank gets sick while working as a home personal care aide, she’s caught between the threat of passing the illness to her clients or not getting paid. “You don’t want to endanger yourself or the clients,” the fifty-something Bridgeport resident said. “If any of our home care