Eldercare And COVID: How To Help Seniors And The People Who Care For Them

Eldercare has too steadily been unnoticed of our nationwide well being care dialogue. Now, as COVID-19 tears via long-term care amenities, the will for top quality care hasn’t ever been extra transparent.

The disproportionate affect on seniors in long-term care amenities is stark, accounting for eight% of all COVID-19 instances however 40% of deaths. The collection of instances in nursing houses has remained top in just right section as a result of, even after six months, many amenities nonetheless lack the provides, group of workers and trying out had to regulate the virus’s unfold. The state of affairs places senior electorate in danger ― and their caregivers, too. 

These caregivers paintings lengthy hours for low pay; many paintings a couple of process to make ends meet, expanding transmission between amenities, because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has famous.  

It doesn’t need to be this manner. The greatest issues at nursing houses at the moment replicate 3 obviously identifiable deficiencies: now not sufficient trying out, now not sufficient protecting tools and now not sufficient employees. 

Fixing those would now not put a forestall to nursing house COVID-19 deaths. But it might virtually indubitably cut back them and, alongside the best way, fortify the standard and protection of eldercare and the lives of the individuals who supply it. 

Join HuffPost Senior Reporter Jonathan Cohn and National Domestic Workers Alliance Executive Director Ai-jen Poo for a dialogue at the systemic problems plaguing present care choices, and what a greater gadget would possibly appear to be for seniors and care suppliers. The digital tournament will happen at four p.m. ET on Thursday, Sept. 24. Sign up for the development right here. 

Cohn is the creator of ”Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crisis ― and the People Who Pay the Price” and the coming near near ”The Ten Year War: Obamacare and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage.” His protection of well being care coverage is a go-to for wonks and any individual who needs to raised know the way our gadget works and what might be achieved to fortify it.

Poo is the co-founder and govt director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, a nonprofit with 70 native associates and greater than 200,000 participants. Fortune’s 50 World’s Greatest Leaders and Time’s 100 Most Influential People within the World have each identified her paintings, and she or he used to be offered with a 2014 MacArthur “Genius” Award.