As has been previously reported by the Jewish Voice, the situation as it pertains to the high rate of deaths of nursing home patients from Covid-19 in New York City has reached an alarming rate.
Because nursing homes and other skilled care facilities are generally occupied by the elderly and chronically infirmed, these people are considered quite vulnerable to the virus as the vast majority are immuno-compromised.
The issue here is that most nursing homes and rehab centers in the New York City metropolitan area are dangerously short staffed; especially during the public health emergency that we are experiencing.
As a result of not being properly staffed; negligence and abuse of nursing home patients has become a ubiquitous phenomenon. Each day more residents are dying and dying alone; without the comfort of family and friends at their bedside.
What makes matters even more reprehensible is the fact that when patients die at such rapid rates, the nursing homes do not have the ability to send their bodies to a morgue or funeral home as these venues are currently overwhelmed with those who has succumbed to the hideous Coronavirus. In other words, a significant number of people are dying so quickly that there is no place to bury their remains.
The Jewish Voice has learned that such nursing homes in Brooklyn such as the 189-bed Chateau at Rehabilitation & Nursing Center in the Sheepshead Bay section of the borough has had over 40 residents died there from the virus in the last three weeks. A worker at the home told the NY Post that dead bodies were being stored in the center’s basement and then were just left in their beds.
The same appears to be true for the King David King David Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation on Cropsey Avenue in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. The same worker told the Post that 50 people died from the virus there and were also left in their beds, due to overcrowding and lack of space at morgues and funeral homes.
Having dead bodies lie in the beds that these now deceased patients spent the last months or years of their lives in is beyond tragic and totally unacceptable in a civilized world. Let’s remember that a society is judged on how it treats its most vulnerable. Those who are of advanced age, are infirmed or have other serious physical or mental challenges cannot be left to rot.
The Jewish Voice is calling upon our readers who have family members, community members, friends and colleagues in nursing homes at this present time to give serious consideration to moving them out as soon as humanly possible.
You will be saving a life a loved one. You will be according them the immense respect and dignity that they so richly deserve as they struggle through their senior years.
Below, please find a link to all nursing homes in Brooklyn.
https://www.nursinghomes.com/ny/brooklyn/
