The coronavirus outbreak has changed how senior care facilities operate. We don’t question the heartfelt dedication and work senior care facility aids, nurses, and doctors provide. Senior care homes have already shut their doors to visitors and outsiders who haven’t been screened properly.
However, the problem is that operators don’t run or design senior care facilities to handle this type of pandemic. Senior living facilities are often crowded, making it nearly impossible for tenants to practice social distance. It really only takes one person in the home to spread it to everyone.
Search google for “senior care rooms” and you’ll find images of mostly small rooms with multiple hospital beds sometimes. How exactly do designs like this prevent the spread of any sickness, especially one highly contagious like coronavirus?
Our seniors are the most vulnerable to sickness in general. Every time we check the news (Google: “Coronavirus Senior Care Facilities“), there’s been another coronavirus outbreak in another senior living home.
Are CDC Guidelines Helping Stop the Spread of COVID-19?
The CDC has already released guidance (Preparing for COVID-19: Long-term Care Facilities, Nursing Homes) for senior care facilities to follow. Are the guidelines not enough to stop the spread of coronavirus in senior care facilities?
Over 400 senior living facilities and nursing homes have seniors that infected with the coronavirus. The number of cases in care homes has been growing almost every day this month.
Unfortunately, most seniors have no other choice but to stay put and risk infection. It’s heartbreaking to think about it.
Based on how this coronavirus outbreak is spreading, the guidelines either aren’t working or they’re not being followed thoroughly enough.
Which is it? What exactly is being done to prevent further coronavirus outbreaks? Has any retrospection been done to find out how the coronavirus is being introduced into our senior living homes? What are senior homes that haven’t been infected doing right?
Coronavirus Senior Care Facility Pointers
These are the hard questions that need to be answered. Above all, we need to stop being reactive and start being proactive to win this war against our seniors.
We have to assume the coronavirus enters senior care facilities from the outside. We can’t imagine residents are leaving the senior care homes only to return infected. Residents that have to leave the senior living facilities to go to the hospital are being shunned away.
It is up to the facility and caretakers to take extreme measures to keep the coronavirus out. Unfortunately, the task seems to be even more daunting due to an already reported risk of caregiver shortages.
Operators of senior living facilities in South Florida are even warning that they can’t keep the coronavirus out. Based on how they’re operating, they’re probably right. You can’t properly screen everyone that enters the facility, so the solution should be to eliminate the coronavirus entering completely.
When you still have employees taking public transit to work, it’s inevitable that one of them will become ill. Not to mention, if they go home to family or visit a crowded grocery store.
If senior care facilities seriously want to eliminate the potentiality of the coronavirus, it’s time to get extreme. Essential staff needs to find a way to not leave the facility period. It should become their home for the foreseeable future until this nightmare is over.
Operators should have medical, food, and other supplies delivered and dropped off. Eliminate all outside access to the utmost ability.
Therefore, until operators start taking these measures, more senior care facilities will be infected.
