As the death toll climbs, the nursing home industry is asking states for immunity from lawsuits for owners and employees of the nation's 15,600 facilities.
This article talks about how for profit and non profit nursing home industries are asking to have immunity in regards to the pandemic. The immunity would protect nursing homes from COVID-19 related lawsuits. Lawsuits have already been filed by family members who have lost a loved one due to being infected by Covid-19 living in a nursing home.
In some circumstances, nursing homes may have used every precaution they could to keep residents safe, yet because of the nature of the illness it may have been introduced into some facilities inadvertently such as an employee going to work who was infected with Covid-19, yet had no symptoms.
On the other hand, there are likely to be nursing homes who were not taking the necessary precautions and this led to residents becoming infected with Covid-19. Because of this, I am not sure if a blanket immunity is the best approach. Maybe a case by case basis is would be a better approach, but then again, this may be impossible because it would be an enormous endeavor.
This is another difficult fallout of the Covid-19 crisis. My grandmother is living in an independent living facility in Virginia and was set to move to Pennsylvania in April. The CDC has not allowed the facility to let anyone in other than employees, so my grandmother is stuck there for the time being. This is causing her a financial drain due to the high cost of her current living arrangements, yet there is no alternative and no one knows when she will be allowed to move.There is no financial assistance for her other than the stimulus check.