Franklin Matters: In the News: “This report lays out in heartbreaking detail the terrible failures that unfolded"

Thursday, June 25, 2020

In the News: “This report lays out in heartbreaking detail the terrible failures that unfolded"

From the Milford Daily News, articles of interest for Franklin:

"The leadership of a home for aging veterans in Massachusetts where nearly 80 residents sickened with the coronavirus have died made “substantial errors and failures” as the disease began to spread, likely contributing to the high death toll, according to an independent investigation released Wednesday.

The superintendent of the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home was not qualified to manage a long-term care facility and he and his leadership team made decisions that were “utterly baffling from an infection-control perspective,” the report said. Among them was a decision to move veterans from one dementia unit into another, both of which housed veterans who already had the virus.

“Rather than isolating those with the disease from those who were asymptomatic — a basic tenet of infection control — the consolidation of these two units resulted in more than 40 veterans crowded into a space designed to hold 25. This overcrowding was the opposite of infection control; instead, it put those who were asymptomatic at even greater risk of contracting COVID-19,” the report said."