Nursing home patients in Michigan who’ve been infected with COVID19 have been dropping like flies.

According to Deadline Detroit – The state of Michigan does not know how many elderly people in its nursing homes have died from Covid-19.

More shocking, bureaucrats have no idea how many elderly people have died whose care has been entrusted to the state.

On April 15, Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed Executive Order 2020-50. The order required nursing homes to care for any current residents who test positive for COVID-19 but aren’t sick enough to require hospitalization, in a dedicated area of the facility.

Two days ago, a video went viral on Twitter that showed a young black man, brutally beating an elderly white, male, nursing home patient, who laid motionless, as he was repeatedly punched in the head.

***WARNING***The video is extremely disturbing.

https://twitter.com/mknrdt/status/1263357611950342145?s=20

It didn’t take long for the law enforcement to ID the person who videotaped himself punching the elderly white man in his nursing home bed while repeatedly calling him a “n*gger!”

The man who reportedly taped himself beating the 77-year-old video is 20-year-old Westland, MI resident, Jaydon Hayden.

WXYZ has an update to the story: Relatives of the 75-year-old man who was brutally beaten inside the Westwood Nursing Center began to suspect something was wrong because they couldn’t get in touch with him and they said neither could staffers at the Veterans Hospital.

What they now know is that, for some reason, the Army veteran was taken from his apartment in Detroit to the Westwood Nursing Center on Schaefer on the city’s west side.

After seeing the video, the victim’s family says they were horrified and are now trying to process what happened and gather information.

The Army veteran is now at a local hospital.

The suspect’s father, who asked not to be named, said his son has mental health issues and a pending assault case in Washtenaw County and should never have been placed in the nursing home.

“He has issues and for them to put him in a facility like that, nothing good was going to happen,” the suspect’s father told 7 Action News.

He said his son was recently moved to the nursing center because the 20-year-old was diagnosed with COVID-19 at the University of Michigan Hospital.

The father said he’s been working with Washtenaw County Mental Health Services to get his son the help he needs and that he was placed in a group home in Chelsea. But, recently, he said his son began hearing voices and that’s when he was taken to the hospital and it was there he says that his son was diagnosed with COVID-19.

“He never should have been housed.. quarantined with the victim that he eventually assaulted. That should have never happened,” he said. “Someone dropped the ball.”

The suspect’s father also said his prayers go out to the man his son assaulted.

A March 24 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association lists nursing homes as “Ground Zero” for the pandemic following the unprecedented spread of the disease in Washington, Maryland, Illinois, Oregon, Louisiana, Colorado, New York, Connecticut, and Kansas.

“It is likely that other nursing homes around the country will also become hubs in their communities for the worst clinical manifestations of COVID-19,” the article stated.

A nursing home receiving transferred patients with COVID-19 is not required to notify existing residents, State Long Term Care Ombudsman Salli Pung confirmed in an email.

“Nursing homes would not be able to release specific medical information about another resident due to HIPAA requirements,” Pung said. “When a resident is in isolation, there is sometimes a notification posted on the door to the resident’s room.”

Did the 77-year-old veteran who was brutally beaten the in the nursing home where he was a patient also have COVID-19? Was the family of the 77-year-old veteran notified that a violent 20-year-old man who tested positive for COVID-19 would be placed in isolation with their beloved family member? Will the media ever ask Michigan’s Democrat governor, Gretchen Whitmer about her reckless decision to place COVID positive patients in nursing homes at $5K per patient?

Two days ago, we wrote about how nursing homes in northern Michigan were asked if they were accepting recovering COVID patients from Detroit. According to the report, the request came at the same time as Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was prohibiting Michigan residents from traveling to their vacation homes in northern Michigan to prevent the spread of COVID into areas that either had no or very few COVID cases.

Administrators at Medilodge, which operates two facilities, were contacted by local health officials to inquire whether the facility was accepting COVID-19 positive patient transfers from Detroit.

“We as a health department have serious concerns about the fact that people from outside the area could be brought in and would take some of the resources here,” Health Officer Wendy Hirschenberger said in a phone interview Friday. “Specifically, PPE.”

Hirschenberger said northern Michigan has not reached the peak of the disease and personal protection equipment at local healthcare facilities is already at a premium. State and national supplies of PPE have gone to other, more densely populated areas, she said.

How many patients may be transferred, their health conditions, and specifics on how and when they contracted the disease were not provided to the health department, Hirschenberger said.

Medilodge spokesperson Bill Gray issued the following statement:

“As a licensed long-term care provider in Michigan, we received a request from the Office of the Governor to provide a list of facilities that could provide care for recovering COVID-19 residents that are stable and now ready to be discharged from local area hospitals, to include any current long term care resident, and to provide that information to Health Care Association of Michigan.”

Munson Healthcare Public Information OfficerDianne Michalek confirmed the hospital had been made aware of the situation by the Grand Traverse County Health Department.

“In terms of care, we will care for all patients who present to us regardless of their COVID-19 status or area of residence,” Michalek said in an emailed statement. “We also continue to stress the importance of Gov. Whitmer’s extended stay-at-home order and hope that individuals and businesses will comply.”

There is no government oversight of such transfers should they indeed be planned, even during a pandemic, officials said.

 

Join The Conversation. Leave a Comment.


We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.