Federal officials now requiring nursing homes to report all coronavirus cases

Federal officials have ordered nursing homes to report all coronavirus cases to residents, their families and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new regulation was announced Sunday by President Donald Trump and Seema Verma, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The move comes amid growing concern and a greater focus on covid-19 cases in long-term care facilities. The CDC until now had not tracked the spread of the virus within care homes, which are home to particularly vulnerable elderly patients.

Verma called the facilities “ground zero” for the virus.

“It’s important that patients and their families have the information that they need, and they need to understand what’s going on in the nursing home,” Verma said Sunday at the White House briefing, according to Politico.

A group of House Democrats last week began urging the Trump administration to track the spread within care facilities and publicly report the numbers, according to NBC. U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Scranton, joined with U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., to urge the same.

”We are alarmed by reports that the CMS and CDC are maintaining a list of facilities that have had one or more cases of covid-19, and yet have declined to make this information public,” the senators wrote.

They called it imperative that such information be public, and they asked for a list of facilities, the number of positive cases and the dates of the positive results.

Casey and Wyden on Tuesday applauded the Trump administration for making the move toward public reporting but said more must be done.

“The Administration must do more to help state and local communities to limit the spread of the virus,” the senators said in a joint statement. “That includes making this information public quickly and updating it in real time, increasing testing capacity, getting front-line workers the protective equipment they need and providing premium pay to the heroic workers on the front lines.”

Care facilities have come under scrutiny locally. In Beaver County, Brighton Rehab is under fire for an alleged lack of transparency, and county commissioners claim they are getting conflicting numbers from different state agencies.

In Allegheny County, more than 60 residents at Kane Community Living Center’s Glen Hazel facility have tested positive for the virus and five have died. The county-owned facility has also seen 26 employees test positive.