New Jersey Reviewing Care at Nursing Homes, Site of Half Virus Deaths

(Bloomberg) -- New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said the state is hiring two experts on long-term health care to conduct a two- to three-week review of nursing homes, where half of the state’s 8,549 coronavirus fatalities have occurred.

Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, whose office is already investigating nursing homes with unusually high fatalities, this week asked anyone with firsthand knowledge of misconduct to submit information to covid19.nj.gov/LTC.

On Wednesday, the governor said at a news conference that of the 5,221 virus patients in New Jersey hospitals, 1,146 were on ventilators.

“This number, thank God, continues to decline,” Murphy said of intubated patients. The number of intensive- and critical-care patients, 1,549, represented a 25% drop from three weeks ago, he said. Over 24 hours, though, 439 new patients were hospitalized, four more than the number discharged.

The state, which has issued 18,000 licenses to out-of-state health-care workers, will start granting temporary emergency licenses to recent graduates of nursing, physical assistant, pharmacy and respiratory-care programs, the governor said.

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