The coronavirus outbreak at a nursing home near Richmond, Virginia has now claimed at least 42 lives. CBS News affiliate WTVR reports that 84 more residents at the Canterbury Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center in Henrico have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and are being treated either at the center or area hospitals.
“Many COVID-19 positive residents are asymptomatic carriers showing no sign of being ill, while others are experiencing symptoms of the virus ranging from severe to mild,” a Canterbury spokesperson told WTVR, which said 35 members of the center’s staff have also tested positive.
The new disease, which hits elderly patients the hardest, has torn through nursing homes and care facilities across the country. On Friday, the Canterbury center’s medical director told reporters that our modern society’s willingness to “warehouse” the elderly was partly to blame for the devastating toll.
James Wright conceded that both he and government officials would need to evaluate their response once the crisis has passed, but said it would also be “important to see what we, as a society, could do differently, because this will not be the last untreatable virus to decimate our elders.”
“When we, as a society, see that it’s appropriate to warehouse our elders, and to put them in small spaces, to underpay their staff so that there are chronic staffing shortages — I think if we see that as an adequate treatment of our elders, then we’re going to have a bad time,” Wright said, according to The Washington Post.
