The coronavirus has reduced the number of nursing home occupants by almost 100,000, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of new data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Nursing home occupancy dropped by nearly 10% from the end of 2019 until late May of this year. Of the 110,909 confirmed coronavirus deaths in the United States, 40,600 have occurred in nursing homes, according to an analysis in USA Today. New York has the highest nursing home death count of any state at 6,062, 15% of the total nursing home deaths nationwide.
The drop “reflects many factors including virus-related deaths, deaths from other causes and a steep drop in new admissions,” according to the Wall Street Journal. The data also suggest that many occupants relocated during the pandemic.
The new data come with some caveats. There are about 15,000 nursing homes in the U.S., but only 12,000 submitted data that met CMS’s quality standards. In addition, the Wall Street Journal found errors in the data, including a nursing home in New Jersey that had eight times as many coronavirus deaths as it did beds.
