Vaccines haven't cured loneliness in New York nursing homes

Vaccines have begun saving lives in New York's nursing homes, but they haven't yet cured another crisis caused by the pandemic: loneliness.

Persistently high rates of COVID-19 have left the majority of the state's nursing homes off limits to visitors, despite relaxed guidance meant to help reopen them.

Until this week, under state and federal rules, they could admit visitors only if they had no new infections among either patients or staff for 14 days.

That mark proved too hard for most to reach. A little more than half of the state's 616 nursing homes were ineligible for indoor visits in mid-March, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from the US Centers for Medicaid and Medicare. That's the highest percentage of any state.

New York updated its visitation rules Thursday in a way that will now allow visits to resume under certain conditions, even if a resident or staffer has recently tested positive. But that relaxed standard might not clear the way for visitation in many homes having trouble keeping the virus out.

The lack of visits has frustrated people like Debbie Barbano, who has been able to see her 69-year-old mother at a central New York nursing home only through a window.

"When this hit last year, it was like a bullet to your chest," Barbano said. "She didn't understand why I wasn't coming. It was like I was abandoning her." Under New York's new guidelines, homes would still have to halt visits after any resident or staffer tested positive, but they could potentially resume for some patients if a thorough round of further testing revealed the outbreak was confined to just one part of the facility.

It's unclear, though, exactly how that guidance will be applied and whether the change would mostly affect large homes with multiple buildings, floors or units with little mingling of staff or residents between units.

State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker has justified restrictions on visits by pointing to a winter surge that infected 15,000 nursing home residents, killing at least 3,000.

The federal programme to vaccinate nursing home residents has helped drive down COVID-19 outbreaks and deaths in nursing homes nationwide. In New York, 41 nursing home residents died of COVID-19 in the second week in March, down from 382 for the week ending January 17. Decreased infections nationwide have allowed 80 per cent of nursing homes nationally eligible to open doors by mid-March, including the vast majority of nearly 1,200 facilities in California.

Infections in New York are dropping more quickly among nursing home residents than among staffers. Some workers have been hesitant to take the vaccine. And as New York City and its suburbs see an uptick in cases, the state's data shows just 68 per cent of nursing home residents and 51 per cent of staffers in New York City have been vaccinated. "Nursing homes have finally started to see the light at the end of the tunnel," said Christopher Laxton, executive director of the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, whose group is seeking clarify on the new rules from the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. "But we're not out of the tunnel. We're seeing the end of it." Meanwhile, some relatives are fighting to see loved ones.

Family members in New York and nationwide who have organized on Facebook groups say their loved ones are losing weight, falling, declining cognitively, dying alone and suffering from lack of attention. Federal and state guidance allows compassionate care visits, but families in New York and elsewhere say nursing homes don't always allow them.

Laura Corridi, a 56-year-old senior programmer analyst in Hamlin, New York, has driven an hour and a half on the weekends to stand outside her 93-year-old mother's nursing home and shout to her through a window throughout the past year.(AP) RUP RUP

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