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Florida has one of the Most cases in long-term facilities than any other state.

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Florida has one of the Most cases in long-term facilities than any other state.

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DeSantis loosening up restrictions for nursing homes.

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DeSantis loosening up restrictions for nursing homes.

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TALLAHASSEE - Florida will loosen restrictions on visits to long term care facilities, a change Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Thursday that may have major consequences for the state's most vulnerable residents.

Floridians have been allowed to visit loved ones in nursing homes and assisted living facilities with some restrictions since Sept. 1. But now, DeSantis said, general visitors are allowed to meet with residents outdoors even if a COVID-19 case has been recently reported in the facility. General indoor visits are still banned within 14 days of a staffer or resident testing positive, DeSantis said.

Those the state deems "compassionate caregivers" can visit loved ones indoors whether a facility has a positive case or not. DeSantis also announced Florida will remove social distancing restrictions for those caregivers. Family members will be allowed to hug loved ones when they visit these facilities.

Finally, there will no longer be restrictions on children visiting the facilities, and the number of visitors allowed at one time will be left up to individual homes, DeSantis said.

In announcing these new policies, the governor made the same argument he's made for months: lockdowns are ineffective, and they're bad for people's health.

"There have been instances in which, some of these (places) had no visitors for a long time," DeSantis said during a news conference in Fort Myers. "And even locally, there was even other restrictions in the community. You still had outbreaks."

The announcement came on a day when Florida reported 5,558 new cases of COVID-19, the highest number of new cases since August 15.

Although the state's rate of positive cases has also crept up in recent days, Thursday's reported number of infections was partially the result of a spike in reported tests.

Officials hope the new guidelines, combined with the state's distribution of millions of rapid coronavirus testing kits to long term care facilities will facilitate a return to normalcy. But questions remain about Florida's testing strategy at these facilities.

For instance, in September, the state stopped requiring - and funding - the periodic testing of employees who work at Florida's assisted living facilities. Earlier this month, the state began to supply rapid testing kits to many of those facilities to help them keep up a rigorous testing regimen.

But on a call last week with assisted living facility administrators, officials cautioned that facilities must meet federal regulations in order to process test results.

"The requirement to do a point-of-care test does require that you have a lab license or waiver," Molly McKinstry, a deputy secretary at the Agency for Health Care Administration, said on the call.

Many assisted living facilities do not have such licenses, making testing more difficult at a time the governor is now allowing more access to visitors than at any point during the coronavirus pandemic.

Since the start of the pandemic, DeSantis has said his priority is the protection of long term care facility residents. He banned all visitors in to the facilities in March, and sent millions of pieces of personal protective equipment to the homes soon thereafter.

"If you just continue working with these long term care facilities, that really does seem to be where most of this ballgame is," DeSantis said in May.

Even so, Florida has struggled to keep the virus out of the homes. A recent dashboard from the AARP showed that Florida has had more nursing home cases and deaths than the national average.

As of Thursday, 16,470 people had reportedly died from the virus in Florida. State data showed that 6,415, or about 39 percent of those who died were staff or residents of long term care facilities.
Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau Staff Writer Mary Ellen Klas contributed to this story.

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DeSantis loosens Florida nursing home visit rules, leaves decisions to facilities

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TALLAHASSEE - Florida will loosen restrictions on visits to long term care facilities, a change Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Thursday that may have major consequences for the state's most vulnerable residents. Floridians have been allowed to visit loved ones in nursing homes and assisted living facilities with some restrictions since Sept.

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Cases rise daily especially in nursing homes

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Cases rise daily especially in nursing homes

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Cases in Nursing home rose back in July when everything “opened” up. But DeSantis letting people visit the patient in the facility. And also lifting restrictions on patients visiting families during the holidays is only a recipe for disaster.

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TALLAHASSEE (CBSMiami/NSF) - Despite a steadily growing number of COVID-19 cases in Florida communities, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday announced the state will begin allowing outdoor visitation at long-term care facilities, regardless of whether the facilities have COVID-19 infections.

Indoor visitation at nursing homes and other facilities will still be tied to COVID-19 infection rates of facility residents and staff members.

The state changes will also allow children to visit long-term care residents, with the governor noting during an appearance in Fort Myers that children "aren't particularly vectors."

The changes came less than two weeks before the Nov. 3 general election, when voters will consider candidates - ranging from candidates for president to congressional and legislative seats - through a COVID-19 lens that includes how to balance a return to normalcy with public health and safety.

Florida barred visitors to nursing homes and assisted living facilities in the spring to try to prevent spread of the deadly virus. But the DeSantis administration on Sept. 1 issued an executive order authorizing visitation to resume and providing broad guidelines that nursing facilities were required to follow.

The executive order authorized general indoor and outdoor visitation at long-term care facilities so long as the facilities had gone 14 days without any new cases of COVID-19 among residents and staff. General visitors were required to wear masks and to maintain social distance.

The executive order authorized nursing homes to identify certain "essential" and "compassionate" caregivers who were authorized to visit regardless of COVID-19 infection rates.

During the appearance Thursday in Fort Myers, DeSantis reiterated his view that it is important for residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities to have visits from family members.

"I think the families have just universally been very, very happy with being able to be reunited with their loved ones," DeSantis said. "And I hear people say, "Oh, well, you know, you shouldn't have Thanksgiving this year.' ... And I'm just thinking to myself, you know, shouldn't individuals be in the position to be able to make those determinations? And if a family is in a situation where they are behaving in a safe way and the facilities are doing what they need to do, we need to be able to have family connections. This is very, very important."

DeSantis touted the state's efforts to keep COVID-19 out of nursing homes. As of Wednesday, state data showed a less than 1 percent positivity rate at nursing homes and assisted living facilities, or that 807 of 138,678 long-term care residents were positive for the virus.

However, the state isn't including in its calculations 5,214 positive long-term care residents who have been transferred from their facilities. When those residents are included, the positivity rate is 4.3 percent.

Also, third-party data paint a less-rosy picture than data produced by the Florida Department of Health.

AARP issued a "dashboard" this month showing that 1.38 of every 200 nursing home residents in Florida died from COVID-19 during a four-week period ending Sept. 20, compared to one of every 200 residents nationally.

The AARP data also showed that the rate of infected nursing-home residents in Florida was 4.5 percent, compared to 2.6 percent nationally. Moreover, the rate of infected staff members in Florida nursing homes was 3.9 per 100 residents, exceeding the national average of 2.5 per 100 residents.

"It boils down to what we are or are not doing to prevent transmission between each and every one of us," said Dr. Aileen Marty, an FIU infectious disease expert.

She's concerned with the growing misconception that we should let everyone become infected and protect the vulnerable.

"That's not how the virus works and we know as less susceptible people become ill they pass it on to more susceptible people," she said.

As of late Thursday afternoon, the state had not issued a new executive order detailing the changes to the visitation policy.

DeSantis said the new order will also clarify that "compassionate" caregivers - or visitors who are there to console residents because of life-altering events - don't have to abide by social distance requirements.

DeSantis said there was confusion in some areas of the state about whether that was the case. The visitation policy allows "essential" and "compassionate" caregivers to touch residents.

Meanwhile, DeSantis said the state was making changes related to outdoor visitation because the chances of spreading the virus in such settings were lower.

"The reason for that is we just don't have very many cases that get linked to outdoor activity. I'm not saying it can't happen. Obviously, it could happen under the right circumstances," DeSantis said. "But being outdoors is something that has been very positive."

DeSantis also used the appearance to reiterate a commitment to sending a portion of rapid testing kits the state is getting from the federal government to assisted living facilities to test staff members and visitors for the virus.

Produced by Abbott, the BinaxNOW COVID-19 Ag Card delivers test results in 15 minutes. But the rapid antigen tests are only recommended for use on symptomatic people and aren't as reliable as other tests. Because of those limitations, Florida Surgeon General Scott Rivkees has said the tests aren't a good use for visitation.

But DeSantis on Thursday said it was a good use of the supplies, calling it "testing with a purpose."

(©2020 CBS Local Media. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The News Service of Florida's Christine Sexton contributed to this report.)

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Despite Growing Number Of COVID Cases, Florida Expands Nursing Home Visitation

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TALLAHASSEE (CBSMiami/NSF) - Despite a steadily growing number of COVID-19 cases in Florida communities, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday announced the state will begin allowing outdoor visitation at long-term care facilities, regardless of whether the facilities have COVID-19 infections. Indoor visitation at nursing homes and other facilities will still be tied to COVID-19 infection rates of facility residents and staff members.

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Experts aren’t pleased with the decision .

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Experts aren’t pleased with the decision .

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Gov. DeSantis looking to relax restrictions on visitors at nursing homes