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COVID-19 Nursing Home Cases Up 400% in Surge States

Federal data from 20 hard-hit states shows a four-fold increase in coronavirus infections among nursing home residents between May and late October.

The number of coronavirus infections among nursing home residents in 20 of the hardest-hit states has increased by 400 percent since May, reports the Associated Press. The new data comes from a study by the University of Chicago which determined that cases rose from 1,083 to 4,274 between the week ending May 31 and the week ending October 31. Nursing home resident deaths more than doubled to 699 during the same period and infections among staff more than quadrupled to more than 4,000 in the same five-month period. The rise comes even though the Trump administration has allocated $5 billion to help beef up testing in the country’s nursing homes, including more than 14,000 fast test machines. The 20 states analyzed in the study are those with the highest COVID-19 hospitalizations: Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin, West Virginia, and Wyoming.