After state officials released detailed data this week on COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on Massachusetts nursing homes, Gov. Charlie Baker told reporters Thursday that the toll was an “enormous tragedy.”
For the first time Wednesday, the Baker administration released a list of confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths for every long-term care facility in Massachusetts, which includes nursing homes and rest homes.
As of Thursday, the state had reported a total of 4,123 deaths in long-term care facilities, which make up more than 62 percent of the state’s overall death toll of 6,640. And as The Boston Globe reported, more than 80 facilities have reported at least 20 deaths due to the virus, which is especially lethal for older adults. Across the country, nursing homes have accounted for roughly a third of COVID-19 deaths.
During a press conference Thursday afternoon in Lowell, Baker said the state has “made adjustments all the way along” to address the tragedies at nursing homes; in April, officials restricted outside visitors and worked to expand access to testing and protective gear. By this week, 350 of 360 nursing homes in Massachusetts had achieved a baseline level of testing of both residents and staff.
Still, the governor said Thursday that the issue has been “terribly difficult.” In addition to having a highly vulnerable population, the inherent nature of care at nursing homes makes it relatively easy for the virus to spread. Referring to a recent Wall Street Journal article, Baker compared it to how the amount of close, face-to-face contact in basketball made the sport “absolutely perfect with respect to COVID’s ability to infiltrate it.”
Similarly, he suggested that if you “had to pick a care delivery model that was absolutely perfect for COVID-19 to wreak havoc on it,” it would be nursing homes.
“You would pick a model where people who serve those folks every day — put their hands on them a lot,” Baker said. “They feed them and they bathe them and they dress them and they recreate them and they transport them.”
Baker added that, “to top it all off,” the evidence that around 25 percent, if not more, of those infected with the disease are asymptomatic had “a lot to do with the tragedy.”
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