Trump makes more recommendations for nursing homes, where deadly coronavirus spread rapidly

President Trump has issued new guidelines for nursing homes, where the coronavirus has spread rapidly and fatally and that will likely change how such facilities care for the elderly and others when the pandemic is over. 

“Today, we’re further recommending that all nursing home facilities assign the same staff to care for the same group of residents consistently to minimize any potential spread,” the president said Thursday, while making clear that such operations should have already closed their doors to anybody who’s not providing medical attention to residents.

He also urged such facilities to designate separate areas for healthy and sick residents.

One of the first U.S. outbreaks of the deadly virus was at the Seattle-area Life Care Center of Kirkland. Two-thirds of facility's residents and staff have tested positive for the virus, and the facility has been linked to 37 virus-related deaths. It also has the highest number of coronavirus deaths of any location in the U.S.

State and federal officials cited numerous problems including the facility failing to have an adequate infection-control protocol and not reporting a spike in respiratory infections among residents. Life Care was fined $600,000 and was warned that it might no longer be allowed to participate in Medicare and Medicaid if it fails to come under federal compliance. 

More recently, 77 people at a facility in Mount Aire, Maryland, have the virus and five others have died from the infection. 

The American Health Care Association/ National Center for Assisted Living on Friday acknowledged that the number of infections and deaths caused by the virus will be instructive and bring about change.

“Dealing with a virus that has caused historic unrest among our entire nation, we will undoubtedly learn and adapt from this," the associations said in a joint statement. "We will see change throughout the entire health care system, not just with long-term care providers. This pandemic has amplified the need for critical resources in long-term care that we’ve been talking about for years: additional staff and proper funding for care. We hope this will take precedence now and after we get through this.”