The State of Connecticut Department of Public Health is well awareof the calamitous effect in 2020 of attempting to solve hospital overcrowding by pushing COVID-19 patients to our nursing homes and assisted living facilities.  Their own web page states that the residents and staff in these facilities are the most vulnerable population.  

Nursing homes and long term care facilities have been disproportionally affected by the pandemic.  In 2020, deaths among residents constituted nearly three-quarters of all COVID deaths.  With COVID cases now filling hospital beds, the state is yet again implementing guidance to coerce skilled nursing facilities to accept COVID patiences in recovery. 

Understaffed nursing homes and their residents are the most defenseless to COVID exposure and yet the state is willing to put them at risk yet again.  This can be stopped if the reaction is quick and powerful.  There are other options, other unused locations, at home options for many of the less severely infected, and other creative alternatives. 

Please tell Commissioner Manisha Juthani and Governor Lamont that all lives have dignity and to stop solving the overcrowding in hospitals by bringing the virus back to the nursing homes.  We cannot wait even a day to do so.