Nursing homes account for more than 40 percent of U.S. coronavirus deaths, analysis shows

Residents and staffers at nursing homes and long-term care facilities have accounted for more than 250,000 coronavirus infections and 50,000 deaths in the United States since the pandemic began, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows.

Overall, Johns Hopkins University has tallied more than 116,000 COVID-19 deaths in the country, and more than 40 percent of the virus' death toll is linked to nursing homes. That's probably an underestimate, the Journal notes, since there's a lack of consistency in state reporting when it comes to nursing home-specific data. Arizona, for example, only reports the number of facilities with infections, leaving out the number of cases and deaths, and New York doesn't include nursing home residents who died in a hospital to avoid double counting.

It's also not entirely clear what many facilities are doing to curb the spread of the virus; nearly half of the country's nursing homes have gone without an official inspection of their virus-stemming procedures, Politico reports. The lack of oversight has left some patient advocates skeptical because it means "you're essentially taking the providers' word that they're doing a good job," said Richard Mollot, the executive director of the Long Term Care Community Coalition. Read more at The Wall Street Journal and Politico.

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