FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM MAY 7, 2020 • THE QUEENS COURIER 3
сoronavirus
Queens assemblyman introduces legislation to
establish emergency mandates for nursing homes
BY CARLOTTA MOHAMED
cmohamed@schnepsmedia.com
In the wake of nursing home deaths
across the city and country, state
Assemblyman Ron Kim is introducing
a new legislation that would establish
requirements for residential healthcare
facilities during a state disaster emergency
involving a disease outbreak.
Kim announced the bill, A10350, on
April 29, following the discovery of at
least 29 deaths due to COVID-19 at the
Sapphire Center for Rehabilitation and
Nursing of Central Queens in Flushing.
Th e state assemblyman exposed and confronted
the city and state on the matter,
aft er meeting with a constituent who was
unable to visit her 77-year-old mother at
the facility.
Th ough the legislation may not bring
back the countless New Yorkers who died
preventable deaths, Kim said, it is the
bare minimum they can and must do to
prevent future tragedies.
“Our community continues to reel from
anger and disbelief at the negligence and
disregard shown on this issue, and the
irreparable harm done to nursing home
residents in our community, throughout
New York and across America,” Kim
said. “Th e next COVID-19 wave may hit
us even with a stronger force, and we
must do everything now to protect the
lives of the most vulnerable members of
our society.”
Kim’s legislation mandates that such
facilities take the following steps:
Maintain adequate personal protective
equipment (PPE) and daily record-keeping
of their usage.
Give timely and consistent communication
with residents and their loved ones
about any suspected or confi rmed infections.
Inform residents of alternative care
options, such as home care, that they
may pursue; if they opt for such alternatives,
the Department of Health will allocate
the appropriations needed to secure
them.
Ensure residents and loved ones can
communicate at least three times daily.
To transfer, with DOH support, any
COVID-19 patients and fi nd alternative
options for those residents and their family
members.
Daily screening of nursing home staff
Furthermore, the bill requires all facilities
to provide detailed daily reports to
the state and local health departments on
potential disease spread on their premises.
For any mismanaged facilities, the State
Department of Health Commissioner
would also have the authority to appoint
temporary operators, who would assume
operational control and responsibility.
Senator Andrew Gounardes
(D-Brooklyn), a sponsor of the bill, said
it would guarantee that the Department
of Health maintains transparency, communication
and safety measures so families
know their loved ones are safe.
“You can evaluate a society by how we
treat our most vulnerable members, and
by that standard, this was a terrible failure.
We must do better,” Gounardes said.
For Livia Machin, it was a nightmare
trying to fi nd out the status of her 83-yearold
father, Alfredo Munoz, who lived at
the Sapphire Center for Rehabilitation
and Nursing in Flushing for the past three
years.
According to Machin, aft er March 11,
she was given the runaround when she’d
call the nursing home. Eventually, she was
able to see her father three times a week
via video call.
“He was in decent health sitting in
a wheelchair trying to talk to me. He
has dementia and that was on April 8,”
Machin said. “On April 11, aft er 10 trials
of trying to reach someone, I was told
that my father was on his deathbed — his
blood pressure went down and he was on
oxygen. Th ey told me to prepare myself.”
In a state of shock, Machin said she
couldn’t understand why she didn’t
receive a phone call from the nursing
home about her father’s illness.
“I told them I wanted him to get tested,
and they didn’t tell me exactly what
they had. I wasn’t getting any answers. I
still don’t know if he had the virus or not,
and I just had to deal with it, and
accept the fact that he’s gone,”
Machin said.
Machin is still trying to
get her father’s death certificate
corrected, which
presumes he had
the virus a day
before his death,
she said.
“ M y
father was
the type
of person
who
watched over everybody in the nursing
home until he started losing his speech.
He was very well loved — he knew everybody
from the maintenance men to the
highest nurse,” Machin said.
Now, he’s gone and all I can do is
speak for him and get this bill passed to
save other people’s lives.” According to
Beth Finkel, AARP New York state director,
nursing homes and adult care facilities
are the new front in the war against
COVID-19.
Older adults and others with underlying
medical conditions who live in nursing
homes and other adult care facilities
are the New Yorkers at the highest risk of
death from COVID-19.
“We need to ensure that employees of
adult care facilities have the personal protective
equipment and testing they need
to keep them and those for whom they
care as safe as possible,” Finkel said. “Th e
state mobilized impressively to ensure
hospitals had the resources they needed
to care for patients at the onset of the
pandemic; residents and workers in
nursing homes and other adult care
facilities deserve the same.”
Cuomo to take cautious, four-phased approach to reopening NY
BY MARK HALLUM
mhallum@schnepsmedia.com
@QNS
Governor Andrew Cuomo is looking to
a reopening plan for New York that has
four phases instead of the original two
pitched in April as COVID-19 hospitalizations
started declining.
Cuomo said by following the metrics
and taking a nuanced approach, society
could get back to life while compensating
for the rate of transmission of the coronavirus
at 1.1 or less. Any more than that
and it is at “outbreak” levels.
“As long as your rate of transmission is
low and manageable, then reopen your
businesses. And reopen your businesses
in phases so you’re increasing that activity
level while you’re watching that rate of
transmission,” Cuomo said. “If it gets over
1.1, stop everything immediately.”
As summarized by Cuomo in earlier
press conferences, the Centers for Disease
Control mandates that before a region can
begin reopening, they must have 14 days
of consecutive decline in hospitalizations
and deaths.
As such, the governor has set May 15 for
the end of the PAUSE program. For regions
with very few COVID-19 cases, new total
cases cannot exceed 15, and new deaths
cannot exceed fi ve on a three-day rolling
basis. Before regions can begin reopening,
they would also need a testing capacity of
30 for every 1,000 people. Although the
daily death toll has gone from 299 on May
1 to 226 on Sunday, Cuomo said this statistic
is not on the decline as fast his administration
would like. In preparation of any
surges in cases, Cuomo says 30 percent of
hospital and ICU beds have to be reserved
for coronavirus patients so as not to overload
the system.
Th is was announced during Sunday’s
press briefi ng in which he said hospitals
will now be required by the state to
keep up to 90 days of personal protective
equipment in stockpile at any given time.
“We have a couple of weeks, but this
is what local leaders, what a community
needs in order to reopen safely and intelligently.
It can’t just be, ‘We want to get out
of the house,’” Cuomo said. Th e success of
a region’s reopening can depend on the
competence of elected offi cials, according
to Cuomo, which can mean the diff erence
between life and death, he said.
/WWW.QNS.COM
link
link
link
link
