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Law360 (March 13, 2020, 10:24 PM EDT ) The Trump administration directed the nation's 16,000 nursing homes Friday to block almost all visitors, calling the "severe" step essential to preventing deadly coronavirus infections in the elderly.
Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said during a White House event that nursing homes should "temporarily restrict all visitors and nonessential personnel, with a few exceptions, such as end-of-life situations."
"We fully appreciate that this measure represents a severe trial for residents of nursing homes and those who love them," Verma said. "But we are doing what we must to protect our vulnerable elderly."
The announcement came at a Rose Garden news conference where President Donald Trump declared a national emergency in response to the novel coronavirus, which causes a disease called COVID-19.
During a subsequent media briefing Friday night, Verma said, "The moment we believe these restrictions can be relaxed, we will do so."
More than 1.3 million Americans reside in nursing homes, and the combination of advanced age and close living quarters appears to be especially dangerous when it comes to the coronavirus. Twenty-five deaths — more than half of the confirmed COVID-19 fatalities in the U.S. — have been linked by government officials to a single nursing home in Washington state.
"Washington has been very tough — in particular, a nursing home," Trump said at Friday's news conference.
The guidance released late Friday advised nursing homes to make case-by-case decisions about exceptions for visitors to dying residents. Visitors with symptoms of respiratory infections "should not be permitted to enter the facility at any time, even in end-of-life situations," the guidance said, adding that even symptom-free visitors must wear face masks.
In its guidance, CMS outlined a number of other new policies, including a directive that nursing homes "cancel communal dining and all group activities."
Friday's clampdown superseded new visitation guidelines that CMS had unveiled just four days earlier and apparently deemed insufficient as the outbreak generated increasing alarm. The earlier guidelines advised nursing homes to turn away visitors based on certain criteria, including flu symptoms, recent international travel or residency near areas with positive coronavirus diagnoses.
Mark Parkinson, president of the American Health Care Association, the top trade group for nursing homes, said in a statement late Friday that the new guidance from CMS would also supersede a separate guidance document that his group issued a few days earlier.
"Everyone agrees that providers must take dramatic action to limit nonessential individuals from entering our buildings and to ensure that employees who are sick stay home," Parkinson said.
--Editing by Jill Coffey.
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