NEW YORK - The call came on March 24. Mr Bob McGuire, the executive director of CP Nassau, a nonprofit group that cares for the developmentally disabled, received a report from a four-storey, colonnaded building in Bayville, New York, that houses several dozen residents with severe disabilities ranging from cerebral palsy to autism. For many of them, discussions of social distancing or hand-washing are moot.Fevers were spreading. Within 24 hours, 10 residents were taken to the hospital.
Separately, a study by a large consortium of private service providers found that residents of group homes and similar facilities in New York City and surrounding areas were 5.34 times more likely than the general population to develop Covid-19 and 4.86 times more likely to die from it. What's more, nearly 10 per cent of the homes' residents were displaying Covid-like symptoms but had not yet been tested, according to the consortium, New York Disability Advocates.
On Staten Island, three state employees who are direct caregivers said 50 of their roughly 600 colleagues in the borough had tested positive. They described the challenges they faced on the job. Mr Lawrence Smiley, the building's longtime managing agent, expressed frustration that he had not received more information from the organisation running the home.
"We still find it hard to get tests for our population," he said. Protective equipment was also"very difficult to get", he said, though that situation was improving. Four staff members from his network have died. In interviews, a number of parents and advocates expressed dismay that the state had not moved more quickly to curtail daily excursions for residents, which continued past the middle of March. On March 16, in internal e-mail traffic obtained by The New York Times, a state nurse expressed alarm to the official in charge of Albany-area group homes.
"A real policy prohibiting discrimination in the allocation of ventilators and all health care must be enacted immediately," said Mr Timothy A. Clune, the executive director of Disability Rights New York.Few in New York's system have been hit harder by the virus than Mr McGuire and his staff. "If they didn't have symptoms that were life-threatening, they had to go," he said."Hospitals got overwhelmed. Nobody's fault. Who could have predicted this?"By March 26, Northwell sent over several nurses in protective gear, who moved through the building conducting tests on both the residents and the staff.
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