COVID-19 has not discriminated, but nursing homes have been especially hard hit.
Don Taylor is a professor at Duke who specializes in the care of elderly people.
He says it was inevitable nursing homes would be a target, but not everyone was ready.
Taylor says most nursing homes don’t have the equipment to handle an outbreak.
He says the best weapon to fight the virus is for all residents and staff members to get tested.
“What has happened is basically we are testing only after people are sick and dying and that’s in large because we still don’t have enough testing,” Taylor says.
NCDHHS Sec. Mandy Cohen says nursing home tests are prioritized at the state lab, and when a nursing home has an outbreak they are trying to test people with and without symptoms.
Taylor would also like to see the state release the specific names of nursing homes with outbreaks.
“Not of individual names…but I think we need to know ‘nursing home A’ has 100 residents and 20 of them are sick,” Taylor says.