STATE NOW LOOKING INTO WOLF NURSING HOME DEATHS

It didn’t take long for one newly appointed state official to find herself in the hotseat… On Thursday, the state House Appropriations Committee was questioning acting Health Secretary Alison Beam on the Wolf administration’s requirement early in the COvid-19 crisis, that nursing homes accept COVID-19 re-admissions from hospitals and the Governor’s recent massive expansion of the top-priority vaccination group, which has now led to a lot of frustration by many who now say they simply can’t even get an appointment to get a shot. The re-admissions are attributed to state nursing homes’ devastating death counts, and committe members say both decisions by the Wolf administratioin, appear to be major blunders. Pennsylvania’s 12,000 deaths that have been recorded in long-term care facilities is third highest in the country… and apparently point to an even bigger error, because it is more than the same category of deaths recorded in California, Texas and Florida, which each have larger populations than Pennsylvania.