ST. LOUIS, MO (KMOX) - One of the enduring images of the pandemic shutdown is loved ones visiting family in nursing homes through windows. Now that more Americans are getting vaccinated are nursing homes completely reopening and getting back to normal?
"I've seen some warm embraces that were really nice." One clear sign of the slow end of the pandemic is the sight of family members, hugging and residents dining together. Kari Lenz, Executive Director for Allegro Senior Living in Richmond Heights says the move to a new normal will be incremental. Meantime, they're doing what they can to allow for more engagement between residents and with family, including a return to in-house visits. "We got pretty creative. I mean, the other day we put an entertainer on our patio and socially distanced all of our residents in the dining room."
Reopening will be different for each nursing home, depending on how the pandemic impacted them. For Lenz, "and I have, happy to say, I've kept COVID out with everything that we've been doing and our protocols, but, you know, there are a lot of sleepless nights that I worried that am I missing something? Is there something, you know, am I going to be hit like some of these other communities? And you just worry about that."
Those results are rare, indeed. Devon Eads is Executive Director of Cedarhurst Senior Living in Collinsville. She says COVID hit close. "We actually lost our former executive director to COVID in January. So, you know, as a community, internally we've experienced some, some internal, you know, personal trauma." And they lost four residents to COVID as well.
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Carlita Vassar is CEO and Director of Nursing for At Home Care Missouri. Her company provides non-medical services for seniors and disabled adults in their homes in a 64-county region in Missouri. When will the pandemic end for her clients? "I don't believe we'll really get back to where we were before. And kind of, to be honest, I don't think we want to, um, it wasn't exactly the best environmental situation prior to COVID."
Vassar says the pandemic has made one thing clear. The nation has to do a better job in the way it serves its seniors and access to healthcare has to improve. She says the advocacy work they do, including getting their clients the vaccine, will likely increase as COVID cases subside. The other sign of the move toward a new normal Vassar says is a move inward. "I hope that what we get out of it, how much we do need each other and how wonderful we can work together.
Devon Eads adds, "for us, you know, the full light at the end of the tunnel will be the County numbers going down to zero, watching the cases slow down and hopefully go away, eventually." For now her staff of 36 is still getting tested for COVID weekly and all 48 residents have been vaccinated. Each person I spoke to thinks some things are here to stay. For Eads that includes stepped up infection control. While still cautiously optimistic, she says the end of the pandemic does have a look and a sound that's breathing life back into her building. "And, you know, seeing more residents out, enjoying the sunshine, getting out to the nice weather that we've been having, enjoying each other's company, again, laughing in the lobby, music in the hallways, that type of thing. "For us, that's really what that looks like."
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For KMOX's Carol Daniel, the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel means hugging and kissing her mother again for the first time in 10 months.
More than one third of US Corona virus deaths occurred in nursing homes.
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