New York-based reporters Jim Mustian, Bernard Condon of the investigative team and Candice Choi of the health and science team revealed that outbreaks of COVID-19 keep happening in nursing homes across the country despite federal lockdown orders imposed last month. They found that the answer appears to lie in the insidious threat of asymptomatic staffers and other individuals who slip past screening measures, spreading the virus to entire nursing home populations. In addition, the coronavirus crisis has deepened a chronic industry staffing shortage, made protective gear scarce and led to actions by several states that force nursing homes to take recovering COVID-19 patients from overcrowded hospitals.
With the help of investigative news researcher Randy Herschaft and reporters across the country, the story did what the federal government has not: tallied up all the nursing home-related coronavirus deaths and infections across the nation, finding more than 450 deaths and nearly 2,300 infections.The all-formats package included a dataset on nursing home inspection reports for members seeking to localize the story. https://bit.ly/2xWpTLQ