Nearly 2,500 care homes have COVID-19 patients but Trump administration has no record of them: Report
At a time when sympathizers of President Donald Trump have started questioning whether the death toll of the coronavirus pandemic in the country is inflated, a new report has come up with startling facts that put the current administration in a lot of discomfort.
The report by NBC News has revealed that at least 2,489 care homes across the country have confirmed cases of coronavirus. That is a humongous 522 percent rise from the federal estimate released just 10 days ago. The revelation means either there has been an explosion that was unseen, or the government underestimated things drastically.
More than 500,000 people have been affected by the virus in the US—the most in any country in the world—while the death toll stands at 18,777, not too far behind Italy which has the highest toll worldwide with 18,849 at the moment.
The NBC report, which was published on Friday, April 10, also claimed that the federal government was not keeping a record of the total number of deaths occurring at the nursing homes.
While the news outlet could gather the information that 2,246 home deaths were recorded in 24 states (36 states gave data about the homes having COVID-19 cases), the other 26 were either unwilling or unable to say how many deaths took place in their nursing homes. Among those states that have not revealed the data are Florida, Michigan and Ohio—all badly hit by the pandemic.
This chaotic situation has left the experts highly disappointed. Since elderly people are considered to be easy prey of the virus, spreading infection at care homes could result in mass deaths if the virus is not prevented from intruding those centers, they feel.
'Impossible to contain virus if it's location is not known'
“It’s impossible to fight and contain this virus if we don't know where it's located. You could see where it could be headed next,” David Grabowski, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, was quoted as saying by NBC.
The NBC report comes in the wake of shocking unrelated revelations from paramedics in New York, the worst hit state, that they have not been testing people for the virus if they died at home or on the street. This logically concludes that the death toll in the US could be actually much higher than what is being officially reported.
While 452 nursing homes in New York have registered patients with COVID-19, the number is 213 in Illinois and 195 in Texas, Daily Mail reported. Wyoming and Montana, on the other hand, have only one infected nursing home each.
Conservative media pundits though have been claiming that people having the virus in them but dying of other illnesses were also being counted as coronavirus victims. Medical experts like Dr Anthony Fauci, who is a member of Trump’s coronavirus task force, have shot down such theories.
The world has seen nearly 1.7 million people hit by the virus while over 100,000 have lost their lives so far.