A devastating scene is playing out at a nursing home in Andover, New Jersey where 68 deaths have been linked to the facility. The New York Times reports that a whistleblower called authorities:
The police in a small New Jersey town had gotten an anonymous tip about a body being stored in a shed outside one of the state’s largest nursing homes.
When the police arrived, the corpse had been removed from the shed, but they discovered 17 bodies piled inside the nursing home in a small morgue intended to hold no more than four people.
The New Jersey Herald adds, “Lack of staff, PPE, infection control and communications from administration and ownership to staff and families about who has been ill or has succumbed to COVID-19 within the long-term care facilities have been the major complaints from staff and family members.”
Staff members from Subacute II, who spoke on the condition that they would not be identified as they feared reprisal from the facility’s management, estimated the Andover facility recently has seen up to three resident deaths per day due to the coronavirus. One of their co-workers also passed away from the virus. They said more than half the staff are out due to the illness or because of fear of catching it; and as staff has dwindled, so has their limited supply of personal protective equipment or “PPE.”
New Jersey Herald reporter Jennifer Jean Miller reports that the facilities owner Chaim Scheinbaum remarked:
“We are fully functioning through these trying times and are providing grief counseling and other means of support for the staff. We are providing all PPE based on CDC guidelines. Sadly these are trying times for everyone involved and we look forward to being able to rid our facility and the rest of the country of this devastating, unprecedented disease.”
Several investigations are now underway concerning the facility. Watch more from NBC New York above.