Massachusetts veterans home suffers nearly 70 coronavirus fatalities

Sixty-eight veterans at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home in Massachusetts have succumbed to the coronavirus, making it the largest known outbreak of the illness at a U.S. long-term care facility.

In addition to the nearly 70 fatalities at the state-run home for aging veterans, 82 residents have tested positive for the virus, as have 81 employees.

The facility’s superintendent, Bennett Walsh, has been place on administrative leave, but is saying that state officials understood early on just how dire the situation was and are now claiming otherwise.

“We didn’t know who was positive and who was negative and then they (Holyoke’s administration) people together and that really exacerbated it even more,” one nurse at the facility told the AP of the initial outbreak. The home has faced staffing shortages for years.

Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration has hired outside council to oversee an investigation into the deaths at Holyoke. The Massachusetts Attorney General will also assess the matter to determine whether legal action is required. And federal officials are investigating whether residents were denied proper medical care and the state’s top prosecutor is deciding whether to bring legal action. 

Such facilities are exceptionally vulnerable to the virus and its rapid spread, considering resident are often elderly and have pre-existing medical conditions. 

There is currently no official count of nursing home deaths across the country. The federal government has only recently required the nation’s more than 15,000 nursing homes to start reporting numbers of confirmed and presumed deaths and infections, but it is not yet clear when that count will be published.

However, the Associated Press has been compiling its own tally from state health departments and media reports, finding at least 13,762 deaths from outbreaks in nursing homes and long-term care facilities across the country.

But that number is likely an undercount because only about half the states are currently reporting nursing home deaths and not all count those who died without ever being tested for COVID-19, the wire service reports.