There has been almost no news about the various pandemic-era COVID nursing home deaths scandals for weeks. That's not unexpected, since that news is now mostly paced by legal events in courts in both New York and New Jersey which are moving at a near-glacial pace. In that gap, the news organizations covering the scandals have featured "recap" type stories. This article focuses on New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy's disaster at state government-run nursing homes for veterans, which we're featuring because it confirms the COVID nursing home deaths are not an old story.
- When NJ veterans homes spiraled amid COVID, NorthJersey.com revealed glaring missteps
-
Here's an excerpt, which focuses on recent developments for this scandal:
COVID-19 devastated nursing homes in New Jersey, but nowhere was the virus more deadly than at two state-run veterans homes in Menlo Park and Paramus, which had more than 200 resident deaths. More than 400 other residents and employees were infected.
Over the initial months of the pandemic in 2020, and then continuing through 2022, deep reporting by NorthJersey.com’s Scott Fallon and Lindy Washburn — based on tips from plugged-in sources that started with an encrypted email from a manager, as well as clues mined by sifting through hundreds of documents obtained through public records requests — revealed why the homes were so devastated.
It culminated in articles that showed how COVID-19 ran rampant through the Paramus home because of poor decisions, lax infection control and an insistence by management that the disease was not at the facilities. Internal emails also showed that managers so adamantly objected to staff wearing protective masks in the pandemic’s first month that they devised penalties with help from Gov. Phil Murphy's office.
Their reporting continued through 2022 as more suits and investigations were launched and Murphy finally moved to privatize the operation of the homes. The anonymous source came forward to say more about the Paramus veterans home out of frustration at what has still not happened since the initial COVID crisis.
An outbreak of coronavirus disease at the New Jersey Veterans Home in Paramus has killed at least 10 residents and likely contributed to the deaths of some 27 more over the past two weeks. To cope, 36 medics from the Army National Guard is deployed.
The National Guard arrived at the Paramus veterans home to help deal with a coronavirus outbreak that has infected 40 and killed 10. Twenty-four other veterans have died since the outbreak began, documents show. “It’s horrible, horrible,” said Mitchell Haber, whose father is a resident. “They’re all sick. They’ve lost almost half their patients.”
The coronavirus has continued to devastate the New Jersey Veterans Home in Paramus in recent days, killing eight more residents and sending dozens to the hospital. The eight deaths bring the official COVID-19 death toll at the facility to 24.
Make no mistake, the COVID nursing home deaths scandals are still an ongoing event in New Jersey. All these new deaths are attributable to negligent policy decisions made by the Murphy administration, which utterly failed to address the known deficiencies at these homes that were originally exposed in early 2020.
