President Donald Trump announced that FEMA will soon be sending personal protective equipment to thousands of nursing homes across the country. However, assisted living facilities will not receive any of it.
Karen Barno with the Arizona Assisted Living Federation of America says when Vice President Mike Pence first talked about providing PPE to long-term care facilities, he said assisted living facilities only provide personal care.
"And that’s not true in Arizona." said Barno. "And it's not true pretty much across the country. Assisted living takes a higher acuity of residents. We have memory care residents, we have residents that are on hospice … and when our residents get COVID, we need to protect the resident, we need to protect the caregivers."
As of Wednesday, 110 long term care facilities, including assisted living, have had at least one confirmed case of COVID-19.
