8 January 2022: Connecticut Looking to Dump COVID Patients Into Nursing Homes

Connecticut asks nursing homes to accept COVID-positive admissions from hospitals

Update: This timeline entry covers events from 6 January 2022.

If you ever wanted proof that politicians aren't capable of learning unless they or their peers face criminal prosecution for their disastrous actions, you can find it in the state of Connecticut. This report indicates the state government is trying to dump COVID-positive patients into nursing homes to free up hospital bed space, much like Andrew M. Cuomo forced New York nursing homes to do in 2020 with his deadly 25 March 2020 directive.

Nursing homes are being asked to accept COVID-positive admissions from hospitals, according to a new guidance from the Department of Public Health, even as positivity rates within nursing homes are increasing sharply.

The latest guidance from the DPH is an indication that the state is trying to alleviate the growing crush of COVID-19 cases in hospitals as they near record numbers of patients.

Until Thursday, the health department required any patient transferred from a hospital to a long-term care facility to have a negative COVID test performed in the hospital within 48 hours of their transfer, but that requirement is now waived.

“Vaccination status of an individual should not influence decisions about hospital discharge or PAC admission,” according to the DPH.

The guidance puts significant pressure on nursing homes that are already facing severe staffing challenges and testing limitations, providers said.

“Hospitalized patients should be discharged from acute care whenever clinically indicated, regardless of COVID-19 status,” Public Health Commissioner Dr. Manisha Juthani wrote in the two-page memo.

At this point, Connecticut's policy differs from Cuomo's deadly directive in that nursing homes are not being forced to accept COVID-positive patients. To the extent that nursing home operators refuse to go along with the public health commissioner's scheme, they should avoid deadly consequences from repeating what happened in New York's nursing homes in early 2020.

Speaking of which, New York's nursing homes also provide more contemporary evidence of why Connecticut's policy could be disasterously bad if implemented.

New York’s COVID-19 nursing home deaths are rising

This report confirms an increase in COVID-19 deaths among New York's nursing home residents as the state is likewise experiencing a surge in COVID cases from the less-deadly Omicron variant of the coronavirus:

COVID-19 deaths in New York nursing homes are rising amid the Omicron surge — but the tally is a fraction of those who died in the facilities in the same period last year, state records show.

There were 69 confirmed and presumed deaths from the virus among nursing-home residents for the week ending Jan. 4, up from 43 the week before.

In the first week of January 2021, fatalities in nursing homes reached 341, according to state Department of Health statistics complied by the Empire Center.

In one week alone in April 2020, 5,156 nursing home patients died of the virus, the state stats show.

Nursing homes became COVID-19 hotspots at the outset of the pandemic. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Health Department issued a controversial March 25, 2020, directive saying the facilities could not bar infected patients, a decision some reports have said caused more deaths.

With potential state criminal charges against Andrew M. Cuomo related to his acknowledged cover-up of the full extent of COVID deaths among New York nursing home residents that resulted from implementing his 25 March 2020 directive having been dropped, it's possible Connecticut's politicians read that action as a green light for them to roll out their version of Cuomo's deadly directive.