Media surveys show COVID-19 has killed more than 10,000 nursing home residents in the United States.
Dr. David Greene works at a care facility in Sonoma County, California.
It has had no cases of coronavirus, but staff are taking extreme precautions to keep patients safe.
Dr. David said, “Nursing homes are not like hospitals. A big part of using any of the protective equipment is knowing how to get it on and off so that you don’t infect yourself or anybody else. And they’re just not trained, not used to that. Nursing home care workers in the United States are amongst the lowest paid.”
He also said that the patients in the nursing homes are getting a lot less exercise and the very elderly if they don’t use it they lose it. “So we’re at risk of having quite a number of people get weak and debilitated and I anticipate that there’s going to be increased falls and that we’ll probably lose some people, not from the virus itself but from the result of our caution,” he added.