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2 charged over handling of veterans home outbreak; Indoor dining restrictions to be eased

By Dave Collins, Susan Haigh, Holly Ramer, Alanna Durkin Richer And Wilson Ringer
Associated Press
Here are the latest developments regarding the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic throughout New England:

New Hampshire

New Hampshire restaurants will be allowed to move tables closer together starting Oct. 1 if they install barriers between them, Gov. Chris Sununu said Thursday.

Currently, tables must be placed at least 6 feet apart to reduce the risk of the coronavirus. With the weather getting colder, restaurants have been asking the state to loosen restrictions for indoor dining. Sununu said he rejected requests to allow bars and restaurants to resume the use of dart boards and other games as unsafe, given that they would put players in close proximity to each other. But he believes increasing the number of tables will be ok, with barriers installed.

“We’re very confident we can move forward with this model in a safe manner,” he said.

Earlier Thursday, the chair of the governor’s Economic Reopening Task Force said some restrictions on outdoor dining also will be adjusted in hopes of prolonging that option. Currently, restaurants that serve meals under tents are required to keep all sides open, but the new rules would allow them to drop two or three of the sides to increase warmth. They also would be allowed to use space heaters, pending approval of local fire officials, said D.J. Bettencourt.

The state has not seen outbreaks associated with restaurants, said Beth Daly, chief of the state Bureau of Infectious Disease Control. But based on contact tracing investigations, health officials are concerned that people are letting their guard down when it comes to gathering with friends and family.

“We can’t regulate these settings, backyard barbecues, birthday parties or other types of social gatherings,” she said. “But we want to emphasize that these types of events that occur are potentially high risk for COVID-19 transmission.”

Halloween safety: The state is recommending that trick-or-treaters consider carrying hand sanitizer if they head out to collect Halloween candy.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has deemed traditional trick-or-treating a high risk activity that should be avoided because of the coronavirus pandemic. Gov. Chris Sununu said Thursday communities and individuals should make their own decisions, but the state is offering some tips for those who do participate.

In addition to the suggestion about hand sanitizer, the state recommends trick-or-treaters and those giving out candy wear masks and find ways to stay at least 6 feet away from each other.

“If folks don’t feel safe, if they don’t feel comfortable, they definitely should not partake in either trick-or-treating or providing candy,” Sununu said. “There’s no reason with a little extra precaution we can’t be successful with Halloween.”

The state is following the CDC guidance in telling residents to avoid Halloween parties and large gatherings.

Special education: Private schools that serve students with developmental disabilities are getting $4 million from the state’s allotment of federal coronavirus relief aid, Gov. Chris Sununu said Thursday.

Sununu said the funding will help about 20 approved private special education providers that together have 750 students. While public schools rely on them to educate students with some of the most intensive needs, they had not been eligible for previous education programs. The new fund will help fill that gap, he said.

Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut said direct support to special education providers will reduce the burden on local schools and help students most in need of support.

The numbers: As of Thursday, 8,044 people had tested positive for the virus in New Hampshire, an increase of 37 from the previous day. The number of deaths stood at 438.

The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in New Hampshire has risen over the past two weeks from 28 new cases per day on Sept. 9 to 32 new cases per day on Sept. 23.

For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia or death.

Vermont

Low levels of the virus that causes COVID-19 in Vermont are allowing the state’s schools to use more school facilities, such as cafeterias, and more mixing of students. The phase begins on Saturday, a date designed to allow for the resumption of interscholastic sports.

Education Secretary Daniel French said schools must continue to use basic mitigation strategies for the virus, such as the wearing of masks and proper distancing.

While the state is moving to Step 3 of its virus plan, there is no Step 4, although he said officials would be regularly looking at the details of the mitigation plans, French said.

“We will probably be in this extended period with mitigation strategies for some time,” French said.

Flu shots: Health Commissioner Dr. Mark Levine said the health department had ordered extra doses of the flu vaccine for the upcoming flu season and he urged everyone aged 6 months and older to get one.

He said officials don’t know how common it could become to catch both the flu and COVID-19 at the same time.

“I think we’d all agree we don’t really want to get both,” Levine said. “We also don’t know whether a surge in cases of COVID and the flu could happen at the same time, the so-called twindemic, that could realistically overwhelm anybody’s health care system and put people at risk.”

The numbers: On Friday the Vermont Health Department reported seven new cases of the virus that causes COVID-19, bringing the statewide total since the pandemic began to more than 1,730.

Of the new cases, three were reported in Chittenden County, two in Windsor County and one each in Bennington and Franklin counties.

It has been 59 days since Vermont reported its last COVID-19 fatality. The number remains at 58.

Maine

The Maine Department of Education has downgraded another county’s schools from green to yellow because of an outbreak of the coronavirus.

Oxford County joined York County with yellow rankings on Friday. The rest of Maine’s counties have a “green” ranking indicating low coronavirus risk.

Oxford County is dealing with an outbreak associated a paper mill, and York County is still dealing with an outbreak in Sanford. Education and health officials said they’re also closely monitoring Androscoggin County, as well.

“These changes are made out of an abundance of caution and for the consideration of school administrative units in their decisions to deliver instruction,” the administration said.

The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported an additional 20 cases of coronavirus Friday, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases to 5,235 cases in Maine since the pandemic started.

The number of deaths was unchanged at 140, the Maine CDC said.

For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death.

Massachusetts

Two former administrators of a Massachusetts veterans home where nearly 80 people sickened by the coronavirus died have been charged over their handling of the outbreak, the state attorney general said Friday.

It’s believed to be the first criminal case in the country brought against nursing home officials for actions during the pandemic, Attorney General Maura Healey said.

Former Holyoke Soldiers’ Home Superintendent Bennett Walsh and former Medical Director Dr. David Clinton were indicted by a grand jury on charges stemming from their decision in March to combine two dementia units, packing residents who were positive for the coronavirus into the same space as those with no symptoms, Healey said.

The veterans “risked their lives from the beaches of Normandy, to some the jungles of Vietnam, and to know that they died under the most horrific circumstances is truly shocking,” Healey told reporters.

A phone message was left Friday with a lawyer for Walsh. An email was sent to attorneys for Clinton. They could each face prison time if convicted of causing or permitting serious bodily injury or neglect of an elder, Healey said.

Relatives of veterans who died at the home said they hope “justice will prevail.”

“We now want our state to move forward and do the right thing to ensure this never happens again to any other veteran,” the family members said in an statement emailed by the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home Coalition, a group advocating for improvements.

The charges come three months after a scathing independent report said “utterly baffling” decisions made by Walsh and other administrators allowed the virus to spread unchecked. The “worst decision” was to combine the two locked dementia units, both of which already housed some residents with the virus, said investigators led by former federal prosecutor Mark Pearlstein.

Healey said Walsh and Clinton were the ones ultimately responsible for the decision to combine the two units, which she said led to “tragic and deadly results.” More than 40 veterans were packed into a single unit that usually had 25 beds, and space was so limited that nine veterans — some with symptoms and some without — were sleeping in the dining room, Healey said.

“This never should have happened. It never should have happened from an infection controls standpoint,” Healey said.

Since March 1, 76 veterans who contracted the coronavirus at the home have died, officials said. The first veteran tested positive March 17. Even though he had shown symptoms for weeks, staff “did nothing to isolate” him until his test came back positive, allowing him to remain with three roommates, wander the unit and spend time in a common room, investigators found.

When a social worker raised concerns about combining the two dementia units, the chief nursing officer said that “it didn’t matter because (the veterans) were all exposed anyway and there was not enough staff to cover both units,” investigators said.

One staffer who helped move the dementia patients told investigators she felt like she was “walking (the veterans) to their death.” A nurse said the packed dementia unit looked “like a battlefield tent where the cots are all next to each other.”

As the virus took hold, leadership shifted from trying to prevent its spread “to preparing for the deaths of scores of residents,” the report said. On the day the veterans were moved, more than a dozen additional body bags were sent to the combined dementia unit, investigators said.

The next day, a refrigerated truck to hold bodies that wouldn’t fit in the home’s morgue arrived, the report said.

Walsh has defended his response, saying state officials initially refused in March to send National Guard aid even as the home was dealing with dire staffing shortages.

He was placed on administrative leave March 30, and the CEO of Western Massachusetts Hospital, Val Liptak, took over operations. Walsh was fired after the release of the report, but a judge invalidated his termination this week after his lawyer argued that only the board of trustees could hire and fire the superintendent.

The Massachusetts U.S. attorney’s office and U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division are also investigating whether officials violated residents’ rights by failing to provide proper medical care.

Attorneys general in other states, including Pennsylvania, have also launched investigations into coronavirus deaths at nursing homes. And earlier this month, federal agents searched two nursing homes near Pittsburgh, one of which had the worst outbreak of any nursing home in Pennsylvania.

Justice Department officials wrote wrote the governors of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan last month seeking data on whether they violated federal law by ordering public nursing homes to accept recovering COVID-19 patients from hospitals.

The letters, sent from the head of the civil rights division, said the department hoped to determine whether the orders “may have resulted in the deaths of thousands of elderly nursing home residents.”

The Justice Department said it was evaluating whether to initiate investigations under a federal law known as the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, which protects the rights of people in nursing homes and other facilities. But the law applies only to nursing homes owned or run by the states.

Connecticut

The number of Connecticut prisoners testing positive for the coronavirus has dropped substantially over the past three months, decreasing to 3% in a second round of mass testing from 9% during the first round, the Department of Correction announced Friday.

The department tested more than 8,500 inmates in the state’s 14 prisons from July 23 to Sept. 8, and 241 tests came back positive. The first round of testing from May 13 to June 25 found that 832 of the 9,500 inmates were positive. Seven prisoners have died from the virus since the pandemic began.

Statewide, about 1% of coronavirus tests are coming back positive.

Prison officials said no inmates have shown symptoms of COVID-19 since Sept. 2. All inmates who test positive are isolated and monitored by health care staff for 14 days.

The Correction Department also has tested more than 10,000 employees since July 17, and 13 tested positive with no symptoms.

“The correctional and healthcare staff have done an incredible job throughout the pandemic,” Correction Department Commissioner Angel Quiros said in a statement.

The department credited the decline in positive tests to continued regular cleaning by staff, and mask wearing and hand washing by staff and inmates. Many virus precautions also were implemented under the recent settlement of a lawsuit seeking to better protect inmates.

The highest positive rates in the latest round of testing were at Robinson Correctional Institution in Enfield — nearly 9% — and Willard-Cybulski Correctional Institution in Enfield — nearly 8%. No offenders at York Correctional Institution in Niantic, where all female prisoners are housed, have tested positive, nor have there been positive tests at the Manson Youth Institution in Cheshire.

Connecticut has been one of only a few states to conduct mass testing of their inmate populations, state officials said.

Organized sports: The Department of Public Health on Friday released new guidance and recommendations for organized sports, including youth and adult club and private league activities. The most strict recommendations were made for those sports determined to present the greatest risk for players contracting COVID-19.

DPH recommended that only small group conditioning and non-contact drills, all considered Tier 1 activities, be allowed for higher-risk sports, both indoor and outdoor. The agency identified wrestling, 11-on-11 football, boys lacrosse, competitive cheer and dance as higher-risk sports.

Out-of-state competitions are not recommended in states that appear on Connecticut’s travel advisory list of locations with high infection rates for lower, moderate or higher risk sports.

Meanwhile, indoor team practices, scrimmages, tournaments and contests involving sports considered to have a moderate risk are recommended, but only if appropriate safety modifications are feasible. Those include sports such as basketball, girls lacrosse, tennis, volleyball, baseball and seven-on-seven football.

The agency’s guidance is expected to be revisited later in the fall or early winter.

Dorm quarantine: The University of Connecticut on Friday placed a third dormitory under medical quarantine because of the coronavirus, while lifting a quarantine on an off-campus apartment complex.

UConn officials said the quarantine at Belden Hall, which houses 93 students, would begin at 4 p.m. because the spread of the virus has not abated and the positive testing rate is disproportionate compared with other dorms. Students in the dorm will be tested twice a week, are banned from in-person classes and cannot have guests.

The university also lifted a two-week medical quarantine on The Oaks on the Square apartments because virus cases have subsided.

Students in a second dorm under quarantine, Eddy Hall, were told Friday that the restrictions are expected to be lifted next week. The quarantine at a third dorm, Garrigus Suites, was recently canceled.

Since students returned to campus last month, 176 residential students and 65 off-campus students have tested positive for the virus.

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