Catherwood LibraryILR School

One nurse was terminated and another forbidden from the premises of a Massachusetts nursing home after a Reuters story reported the details of the nursing home's Covid-19 outbreak, including severe staff shortages and a poor prevention response to the coronavirus pandemic. The story had been published on June 12; two days later, one nurse was relieved of her duties due to "clerical errors" with narcotics, which she had not been informed about until after the story was published, and the other was not permitted to enter the premises. The two nurses had told Reuters of staff shortages that resulted in remaining staff working 16 hour days and 80-90 hour weeks, including a teenaged nursing assistant who had been put in charge of 30 dementia patients. The article also reported that the staff had been given little guidance about coronavirus procedures and staff testing did not occur until mid-May; by the end of May, 34 workers had tested positive. The nursing home also difficulty in preventing the dementia patients from wandering the halls; so far, 25 residents and one nurse have died from Covid-19.