Indiana is sending the National Guard to long-term care facilities to help with COVID-19 protocols. Indiana Department of Health Chief Medical Officer Dr. Lindsay Weaver says Guard members will help with testing and reporting, so that regular staff can focus on caring for residents.
“The Guard will be trained to assist with screening of employees and simple infection control practices,” Weaver said during Wednesday’s press conference. “The work will begin on November 1 and will start in long-term care facilities that are experiencing positive cases and then will expand to all 535 facilities.”
It’s one of a number of steps the state is taking to address a surge of COVID-19 cases in long-term care facilities. Weaver said the Indiana Department of Health is also dipping into the state’s healthcare reserve workforce, to hire people to visit every facility at least three times a week. The facilities themselves have also been using it to address their own staffing needs.
Weaver said the state’s health care workers are exhausted. “They have been running a marathon at a sprint pace for eight months, and the human body simply isn’t designed to sustain such a pace,” she said. “These measures are intended to not only protect residents of these facilities, but will also provide some relief to the staff who have been working around the clock to help care for them.”
Other steps include sending nursing homes more PPE, including two million N95 masks, to help make sure that every staff member can wear one when interacting with patients, as well as reducing the number of people going into nursing homes to begin with. The state has launched a pilot program to speed up the process for certain patients to get home health care when they get out of the hospital.
