A Pennsylvania state House oversight committee is investigating how Governor Tom Wolf's administration has handled COVID-19 cases at nursing homes.
Could Pennsylvania have done more to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at nursing homes during this pandemic?
About 12,500 nursing home residents in Pennsylvania have died from COVID-19. That's nearly half of all fatalities in our state.
House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff says a thorough review is needed to determine what could've been done differently to prevent the spread.
"Our constituents ask us these questions and it's frustrating when we can't answer when they say 'why was my father forced to go there, why did this person be put into a nursing home when they knew there were people that were sick?'"
He's particularly concerned about the policy of returning COVID-positive patients to facilities where they were may not have been isolated from the general population.
Of all the nursing homes in the U.S., three out of the top 10 for COVID-19 fatalities are in Pennsylvania, two in Southwestern PA.
Republicans have criticized Governor Wolf's administration for allowing COVID-positive patients to be returned to facilities where they were placed with the general population.
"At the end of the day, I guess the question bigger to me to ask is if this pandemic happened again today, would we do that same practice," asked Benninghoff.
He said he looks forward to the results of the investigation by the committee.
