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]]>The post Puerto Rico forced to partially suspend primary voting because of lack of ballots: ‘It’s an embarrassment’ appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Puerto Rico on Sunday was forced to partially suspend voting for primaries marred by a lack of ballots as officials called on the president of the U.S. territory’s elections commission to resign.
The primaries for voting centers that had not received ballots by early afternoon are expected to be rescheduled, while voting would continue elsewhere, the commission said.
“I have never seen on American soil something like what just has been done here in Puerto Rico. It’s an embarrassment to our government and our people,” said Pedro Pierluisi, who is running against Gov. Wanda Vázquez, to become the nominees for the pro-statehood New Progressive Party.
The president of that party, Thomas Rivera Schatz, along with the president of the main opposition Popular Democratic Party, held a joint press conference and said they agreed that the remaining primaries should be held on Aug. 16. Other politicians argued that the entire primary be scrapped and held at another date.
An incredulous Schatz noted that there were still trucks with ballots inside parked at the commission’s headquarters as they spoke there.
“The question is, why haven’t they left?” he said.
An official turns away two voters at a voting center lacking ballots in Carolina, Puerto Rico, Sunday, Aug. 9, 2020. Puerto Rico’s primaries were marred on Sunday by a lack of ballots in a majority of centers across the U.S. territory, forcing frustrated voters who braved a spike in COVID-19 cases to turn around and go back home.
(AP)
Hundreds of frustrated voters who wore the required face masks and braved a spike in COVID-19 cases were turned away from centers across Puerto Rico as officials told them that no ballots were available.
The situation infuriated voters and politicians of all stripes as they blamed Puerto Rico’s elections commission and demanded an explanation for ballots reaching only a handful of voting centers by the afternoon.
2020 PURGE? LONG-SERVING INCUMBENTS GETTING OUSTED IN CONTESTED HOUSE PRIMARIES
“This is indignant, abusive and an attempt against the democracy of our country,” said Marcos Cruz, mayor of the northern town of Vega Baja that was still awaiting ballots.
Meanwhile, officials from the island’s two main parties scrambled to find solutions as they urged voters to still show up at centers that remained open.
Yadira Pizarro, a 44-year-old teacher, ran out of patience at a shuttered voting center in Carolina where she had waited more than four hours under a blistering sun.
“I cannot believe this. This is some serious negligence,” she said.
An electoral official, right, tells a voter that the ballots haven’t arrived at a voting center in Carolina, Puerto Rico, Sunday, Aug. 9, 2020. Puerto Rico’s primaries were marred on Sunday by a lack of ballots in a majority of centers across the U.S. territory, forcing frustrated voters who braved a spike in COVID-19 cases to turn around and go back home.
(AP)
One of the most closely watched races on Sunday is that of the pro-statehood Progressive New Party, which pits two candidates who served as replacement governors following last year’s political turmoil. Vázquez faces Pierluisi, who represented Puerto Rico in Congress from 2009 to 2017. Pierluisi briefly served as governor after Gov. Ricardo Rosselló resigned in August 2019 following widespread street protests over a profanity-laced chat that was leaked and government corruption. But Puerto Rico’s Supreme Court ruled that Vázquez, then the justice secretary, was constitutionally next in line because there was no secretary of state.
Meanwhile, the main opposition Popular Democratic Party, which supports Puerto Rico’s current political status as a U.S. territory, is holding a primary for the first time in its 82-year history. Three people are vying to become governor — San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, known for her public spats with U.S. President Donald Trump following the devastation of Hurricane Maria; Puerto Rico Sen. Eduardo Bhatia; and Carlos Delgado, mayor of the northwest coastal town of Isabela.
The winning nominees of both parties will be among six gubernatorial candidates in November’s general election.
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]]>The post Couple forced to wear ankle monitors to self-isolate after Kentucky woman tests positive for COVID-19 appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Couple forced to wear ankle monitors to self-isolate after Kentucky woman tests positive for COVID-19
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on Saturday, Elizabeth Lynne Scott of Heart and County got tested for Cove in 19 because she was planning to go visit her parents in Michigan. My grand parents wanted to see me, too. So just to make sure that, you know, if I test negative, that they would be OK, that everything will be fine after testing positive but without showing any symptoms, Elizabeth says the Health Department contacted her, requesting she signed documents. Pretty much it was that I agree to consent Teoh. I agreed to comply to call Health Department if I was to go. I was to call the health department prior to leave in my house for any reason. Elizabeth chose not to sign. I had gotten a message from them, a text lunches that stated, because if you were refusal to sign, this is going to be escalated long. First be involved. On Thursday, the Hardin County Sheriff’s Department greeted Elizabeth’s husband, Isaiah, at their front door. Open up the door. There’s like a different people, five different cars. I’m like, What the heck’s going on? This guy’s in a suit with the mask. It’s the health department guy and they have three papers for us, for me, Her and my daughter. The couple was ordered to wear ankle monitors. If they travel more than 200 feet, law enforcement will be notified. We didn’t rob a bank. We didn’t rob a store. We didn’t steal something. Leave it in. You know anything wrong? The couple says. They never denied self quarantining. They just didn’t agree with the wording of the documents. And that’s exactly why the director of the public health department had told the judge that I was refusing to self quarantine because of this. And I’m like, That’s not the case at all. I never said that.
Couple forced to wear ankle monitors to self-isolate after Kentucky woman tests positive for COVID-19
A Kentucky couple has been forced to wear ankle monitors after a woman who tested positive for COVID-19 refused to sign health department documents that would limit her travel without permission.Elizabeth Linscott got tested for COVID-19 as a precaution before going to visit family in Michigan last Saturday, WAVE-TV reported. She tested positive, but does not have any symptoms.The Hardin County Health Department sent her documents that needed her signature limiting her from traveling anywhere unless she called them first.She said she refused to sign the documents because of how they were worded, not because she refused to quarantine.“My part was if I have to go to the ER, if I have to go to the hospital, I’m not going to wait to get the approval to go,” Linscott told the TV station.Days later, authorities arrived to their home and placed ankle monitors on her and her husband. They go off if either goes more than 200 feet from their home.Watch the video above to learn more about this story.
HARDIN COUNTY, Ky. (Video from WAVE via CNN) —
A Kentucky couple has been forced to wear ankle monitors after a woman who tested positive for COVID-19 refused to sign health department documents that would limit her travel without permission.
Elizabeth Linscott got tested for COVID-19 as a precaution before going to visit family in Michigan last Saturday, WAVE-TV reported. She tested positive, but does not have any symptoms.
The Hardin County Health Department sent her documents that needed her signature limiting her from traveling anywhere unless she called them first.
She said she refused to sign the documents because of how they were worded, not because she refused to quarantine.
“My part was if I have to go to the ER, if I have to go to the hospital, I’m not going to wait to get the approval to go,” Linscott told the TV station.
Days later, authorities arrived to their home and placed ankle monitors on her and her husband. They go off if either goes more than 200 feet from their home.
Watch the video above to learn more about this story.
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]]>The post At a NY nursing home forced to take COVID-19 patients, 24 residents have died appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>At the time, the Long Island nursing home had only one known resident who had contracted the virus, according to the facility’s president and CEO, Stuart Almer.
A month later, Gurwin is battling an outbreak that’s killed 24 residents — only three of whom were hospital transfers — and one staff member, who worked in housekeeping, Almer said. And the nursing home is still mandated to take in recovering hospital patients known to have the virus, potentially increasing its spread in the facility.
“We can’t say for sure” whether the virus has spread because of the patients transferred under the state mandate, Almer said. “But it’s certainly not helping the situation.”
Three states hit hard by the pandemic — New York, New Jersey and California — have ordered nursing homes and other long-term care facilities to accept coronavirus patients discharged from hospitals. The policy, intended to help clear in-demand hospital beds for sicker patients, has prompted sharp criticism from the nursing home industry, staff members and concerned families, as well as some leading public health experts.
“Nursing homes are working so hard to keep the virus out, and now we’re going to be introducing new COVID-positive patients?” asked David Grabowski, a professor of health policy at Harvard Medical School. Instead, he believes that states should create COVID-only facilities for recovering patients discharged from hospitals.
“The existing places that can really do this safely in terms of staffing and building space to keep them separate are in the minority,” he added.
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When Gurwin staff members told Christina Peredo’s mother about the mandate in late March, her family decided to withdraw her 96-year-old grandfather from the facility, out of fear for his safety, even though he was still on IV antibiotics and recovering from pneumonia unrelated to the virus, she said.
“To make this a mandate without exploring other options, what you’re saying is, ‘Sorry, you’ve lived a good life,’” Peredo, 35, a nurse, said. “It’s reckless and careless.”
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The blowback to these policies prompted California to soften its mandate April 1, saying facilities “can be expected” to receive COVID patients only if they have adequate protective gear and can follow the federal government’s infection control recommendations.
In New Jersey, only facilities “that have the ability to separate patients” into three groups — those who have been infected, those who have been exposed and those who have not been exposed — can accept discharged hospital patients or returning residents who’ve been infected, the state health department said in a statement, adding that 130 long-term care facilities are not accepting admissions.
But in New York, the controversy over the mandate has escalated as the virus has battered hospitals and nursing homes alike: The state not only has more coronavirus cases than anywhere in the country, but also the highest number of known long-term care deaths — at least 3,500 — related to the virus, according to the state health department. A broad swath of nursing homes across the state have already accepted COVID-positive hospital patients in compliance with the mandate, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo has openly criticized facilities for opposing it.
“They don’t have a right to object. That is the rule and that is the regulation, and they have to comply with that,” Cuomo, a Democrat, said in a Thursday news conference. “If they can’t do it, we’ll put them in a facility that can do it.”
Nursing homes across the country have struggled to contain the coronavirus’ spread, facing shortages in testing, personal protective equipment and employees, who assist residents with everything from bathing to feeding themselves. Many elderly residents are unable to comply with basic infection control measures like hand-washing or mask-wearing, and suffer from underlying health conditions that make them more likely to succumb to the virus.
As of this week, the coronavirus has killed nearly 11,000 people in nursing homes in 36 states, according to state health data collected by NBC News. More than half of those deaths occurred in New York and New Jersey.
Early in the pandemic, New York had strict guidelines for when infected patients could be discharged from hospitals: The state required patients to have two negative COVID-19 tests; wait at least seven days since the initial positive test; and be fever-free without medication, according to a March 8 advisory.
But as cases rapidly mounted, hospitals became overwhelmed, and recovering patients who didn’t require hospital-level treatment needed somewhere else to go. While patients must be medically stable to be transferred out of a hospital, those heading to a nursing home or other post-acute care facility require rehabilitation and other care they can’t receive at home.
On March 25, New York became the first state to issue a blanket rule prohibiting nursing homes from denying admission or readmission to residents because they are infected with COVID-19, and banned the facilities from testing patients for the disease before they are admitted. (The state had already required all facilities to isolate COVID-positive patients and prohibited staff from moving between treating those who are infected and those who are not.)
“There is an urgent need to expand hospital capacity in New York State to be able to meet the demand for patients with COVID-19 requiring acute care,” the state said in its advisory, which requires “the expedited receipt of residents returning from hospitals.”
Cuomo has defended the policy in the face of rising objections, saying Thursday that facilities that did not follow the rules for managing COVID patients would be investigated by state health officials and the state’s attorney general, which could result in fines or the facility losing its license.
“They have to readmit COVID-positive residents, but only if they have the ability to provide the adequate level of care under Department of Health and CDC guidelines,” Cuomo said, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“If they do not have the ability to provide the appropriate level of care, then they have to transfer that patient or they call the Department of Health, and the Department of Health will transfer that patient,” Cuomo added. (At Thursday’s briefing, state officials said they had not received any such requests.)
Leading industry groups have strongly objected to the mandate, warning it would accelerate the transmission of the virus and put some of the state’s most vulnerable residents at risk.
“We find the New York state advisory to be over-reaching, not consistent with science, unenforceable, and beyond all, not in the least consistent with patient safety principles,” the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, which represents medical professionals who work in nursing homes, said in a statement.
The American Health Care Association, which represents long-term care facilities, added: “The bottom line is that nursing homes are not a priority in the public health system and this policy reflects that.”
While Almer “vehemently opposes” the mandate, he said that Gurwin had no choice but to comply. He also wants the nursing facility to do what it can to support local hospitals that need to clear beds.
Since the mandate took effect, recuperating patients across New York state have been discharged to nursing homes in Staten Island, Queens and Long Island, among other hot spots, as well as upstate New York.
Gurwin had originally planned to house the patients arriving from hospitals and any other infected patients in a separate, 40-bed unit with its own entrance, dedicated staff and full protective gear, according to Almer. That’s in line with the CDC’s recommendations for nursing homes to isolate patients known to be infected. The first discharged hospital patients began arriving the last week of March, Almer said, just a few days after the mandate took effect.
But Gurwin’s COVID unit quickly filled to capacity as the virus spread inside the facility, and recovering patients kept arriving from local hospitals, he said.
The nursing home currently has 40 long-term residents known to have the virus, in addition to 18 recovering patients transferred from local hospitals. Fifty staff members have also been confirmed positive, though more than half have since recovered and returned to work, according to Dennine Cook, a spokeswoman for the facility.
The rising number of infected residents means that it is not always possible to separate those who are known to be infected from those who are not. If a person outside the space dedicated to COVID patients becomes infected, his or her entire unit is isolated and treated as if any of the residents could be positive, Almer said. But the virus may still spread within the facility, especially to other residents within the unit.
By early April, a second Gurwin resident in his 90s tested positive for the coronavirus, a little over a week after the first hospital patients were transferred to the facility. He subsequently developed pneumonia related to the virus, according to his daughter, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation against her father.
“You’re injecting in something so highly contagious,” said the daughter, who opposes the New York mandate and fears her father may have become infected because of it. Since he became ill, the virus has continued to spread, she added: “His roommate is now COVID-positive. I feel for sure my father contaminated him.”
State health officials say the March 25 guidance was intended to avoid discrimination against infected patients and to help hospitals manage their capacity.
“The policy is to ensure people are not being held in hospitals solely due to their COVID status,” Jill Montag, a state health department spokeswoman, said. “This is important for hospital surge management and their ability to maintain space for patients with acute needs.”
Northwell, the state’s largest health care provider, said its hospitals have had “tremendous” issues with bed space, and that many COVID patients require care in skilled nursing facilities.
“The need to accept COVID positive cases was/is clear,” Dr. Maria Carney, Northwell’s medical director for post-acute services, said in an email. “There are also significant known risks of keeping older, vulnerable patients in a hospital.”
Northwell’s hospitals have sent 788 COVID-positive patients to 118 post-acute facilities since early March, including Gurwin, Carney said. Those include nursing homes that focus on long-term care, as well as facilities that offer short-term rehabilitation; many offer both.
But facilities have been reluctant to accept patients because of the state’s requirements for all infected residents to be isolated in their own rooms with closed doors, among other guidelines, Carney said: “Many community facilities (from my discussions) were and are slow to accept cases because it was/is hard to accept cases while meeting these isolation requirements.”
Both industry leaders and public health experts like Grabowski are urging states to come up with alternatives to avoid exposing at-risk nursing home residents even further.
“Sending hospitalized patients who are likely harboring the virus to nursing homes that do not have the appropriate units, equipment and staff to accept COVID-19 patients is a recipe for disaster,” the American Health Care Association said in a statement. “Governors and public health officials should be working with nursing homes to create as many segregated units as possible right now.”
Connecticut and Massachusetts are both reopening previously shuttered nursing homes to create facilities dedicated to COVID residents, although such efforts have faced delays, and Massachusetts scrapped an earlier attempt to relocate current nursing home residents.
Grabowski suggested that officials could step in to help construct post-acute care facilities for discharged hospital patients, much as the Army Corps of Engineers has constructed temporary hospitals. “Let’s invest in those, and let’s not force nursing homes to do this,” he said.
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In Boston, for example, state and local officials teamed up with health care providers to create a temporary 1,000-bed facility in a convention center for recovering patients who don’t need hospital-level care. In Minnesota, providers created a 50-bed facility for recovering coronavirus patients who might otherwise be sent to nursing homes. New Jersey has partnered with three health care facilities with specially designated beds for recovering COVID patients from hospitals “who are awaiting nursing home placement,” the state health department said in a statement.
In New York, however, no plans to create COVID-only nursing homes or rehab facilities are in the works, Montag, the health department spokeswoman, said. “At this point, we do not have plans to relocate nursing home residents.”
And despite signs that coronavirus infections and deaths have peaked in New York City, the influx of patients from local hospitals hasn’t let up, Almer said.
“We’re seeing the surge from the last few weeks,” he said. “If anything, it just continues to intensify.”
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