Nearly half of all coronavirus deaths in US are from long-term care facilities: Report

The COVID-19 virus death rate is highest among residents of long-term care facilities.

Using extrapolated data, the report from the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity concludes that 43% of deaths from the coronavirus in the United States occurred in facilities that house 0.62% of the population, with 1.8% of nursing home residents have succumbed to the virus.

Data that excludes New York state increases the proportion of deaths in long-term facilities to 53.2%. The researchers say that New York, the epicenter of the COVID-19 virus outbreak, reports deaths of nursing home residents who die in hospitals as hospital deaths, and New York’s higher than average death rate could also account for the lower proportion of nursing home deaths.

In New Jersey, nearly 10% of all long-term care facility residents have died from the COVID-19 virus. States such as New York, New Jersey, and Michigan ordered nursing homes to admit patients who had tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

Avik Roy, Forbes’s policy editor, points to Florida’s success in battling the coronavirus, crediting Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s policies that require nursing home workers to be screened for symptoms, prioritize personal protective equipment disbursement to long-term care facilities, and bans hospitals from sending coronavirus positive patients into nursing homes.

Research from the International Long Term Care Policy Network found that the U.S. was not an outlier when it comes to deaths in nursing homes, as 40.8% of deaths in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom occurred in long-term care facilities.

Roy adds that 99.4% of the U.S. population is half as likely to die from the COVID-19 virus as residents in long-term care facilities are. Germany has largely kept factories open, and most European countries have begun reopening schools. Roy points to these successes as evidence that a reopened economy doesn’t need to lead to increased COVID-19 virus deaths, and can be achieved by “protecting vulnerable seniors, and letting millions of Americans get back to work.”