Nursing Home Residents Feel Like 'Sitting Ducks' In Vaccine Wait

Tim Moran
Updated ·5 min read

ACROSS AMERICA — Nursing home residents will be among the first to receive an approved coronavirus vaccine — but to many, that will not come soon enough.

"I’m happy they put us at the top of the list, but I doubt it’s going to make much of a difference in here," Bruce MacGillis, a nursing home resident in Ohio, told Eli Saslow of The Washington Post. "Can I get the vaccine today? Will I have immunity by tomorrow? 'Cause that’s the kind of timeline we need in this nursing home."

MacGillis is one of 80 residents at the Heartland of Mentor nursing home, according to The New York Post. More than half, he said, have tested positive for the virus and "30 got sick this week."

He said residents at the home, who have been cut off from visitors since March, feel like "sitting ducks."

Residents of long-term care facilities will likely be offered a vaccine by mid-January, and possibly later in December, according to The New York Times, which cited Dr. Moncef Slaoui, chief science adviser of the Trump administration's Operation Warp Speed.

The nursing home toll includes seven residents of a nursing home in Washington state who died after staff members attended a wedding with about 300 attendees, according to an NBC News report.

The Latest

The nation's two largest school districts are going in opposite directions on how to handle the coronavirus. In New York, it was back to school Monday for many of the younger students in the city. The same day, Los Angeles public school officials said all students will need to revert to online learning for at least the rest of the semester as case counts surge across California.

As coronavirus deaths have surged in much of the United States, the virus is now the leading cause of death in the country. COVID-19 was the cause of death for some 12,000 Americans a week ago, and that number topped the number who died of ischemic heart disease and lung cancer, Click on Detroit reported, citing The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine.

The virus has struck every part of society, having an amplified effect on the most vulnerable.

In San Diego, 53 homeless people staying at the San Diego Convention Center have tested positive, according to Lisa Halverstadt of Voice of San Diego. The other 800 or so staying there have been urged to get tested as well.

Help could be on the way for some in the next coronavirus relief bill, but not for all.

Lawmakers on Sunday closed in on a proposed COVID-19 relief bill that would provide roughly $300 in extra federal weekly unemployment benefits but not another round of $1,200 in direct payments to most Americans, according to The Associated Press.

In the Midwest, there have been some sign of progress as the virus spread there slows.

Seven states in the region have seen a sustained decrease in case numbers over the past 14 days, according to The New York Times, something health experts say is not necessarily definitive but undeniably encouraging.

Cases in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota all began climbing after Labor Day, as cold weather pushed people in the Midwest indoors. The situation in South Dakota is bad enough that a number of patients have been flown out of state for treatment because the number of intensive care beds there has continued to dwindle, the Argus Leader newspaper and others have reported.

As numbers dip slightly in the Midwest, a new state has taken over the grim distinction of having the most cases per capita. Rhode Island, with 110.3 cases per 100,000 people, had the most cases per capita as of Monday, according to data from COVID ActNow.

Minnesota and South Dakota are the states with the next most cases per capita, the data shows.

Meanwhile, as the nation's presidential leadership switches from Donald Trump to Joe Biden next month, so will the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, a Harvard University infectious disease expert, will take over leadership of the CDC from Dr. Robert Redfield, Biden announced Monday. Walensky has devoted her career to combatting HIV/AIDS, according to a report from The Associated Press.

More than 1 million U.S. cases have been reported over the past five days, according to CNN. In all, the United States has reported more than 14.7 million cases since the pandemic began.

Newest Numbers

At least 1,111 new coronavirus deaths and more than 181,336 new daily cases were reported on Sunday, according to a Washington Post database. Over the past seven days, the United States has averaged more than 195,900 cases each day.

As of Monday, 45 states and Puerto Rico remained above the positive testing rate recommended by the World Health Organization to safely reopen. To safely reopen, the WHO recommends states remain at 5 percent or lower for at least 14 days.

More than 14.8 million people in the United States had tested positive for the coronavirus as of Monday afternoon, and more than 283,300 have died, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

Stay up to date on the latest coronavirus news via The New York Times or Washington Post.

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This article originally appeared on the Across America Patch