Managing the Impact of COVID-19 in Nursing Homes and Long-Term Care Facilities: An Update.
Adam H Dyer, Aoife Fallon, Claire Noonan and 5 others
PMID 35922016WHAT IT FOUND
Nursing home residents with SARS-CoV-2 often have delirium, falls, diarrhea, or no symptoms.
Vaccination and boosters reduce infection and death. Lockdowns harm mental health and family well-being.
Key findings
01Nursing home residents with SARS-CoV-2 may present with delirium, diarrhea, falls, behavioral change, seizures, or reduced mobility, and one-third to one-half are asymptomatic or presymptomatic at testing.
02Primary vaccination reduced SARS-CoV-2 infection by 81% to 90% and lowered mortality for residents for up to 6 months, while booster doses restored efficacy after waning at 12 weeks.
03Strict lockdowns and visiting bans were linked to increased depressive symptoms, loneliness, and lower well-being in residents and families.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
This is a narrative update, not a systematic review with original methods, so its conclusions depend on heterogeneous published studies. The paper says there is a lack of high-quality evidence supporting any one or composite nonpharmacologic measure, and many studies are observational or modeling. Evidence for visitation bans and shielding is uncertain, and the Omicron impact on nursing homes was not clear at the time of writing. Vaccine protection waned after 12 weeks in one study, and the duration of protection after boosters was not established. Findings are tied to community transmission, vaccination status, variants, and outbreak conditions, so they may not apply unchanged to current settings. The paper reports psychological harm but does not test specific interventions to reverse loneliness, distress, or family well-being loss.
Declared interests
No author conflicts of interest or funding statement is provided in the article text; the article is tagged as supported by non-U.S. government research.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that visitation bans or any single infection control measure are proven to reduce infections or deaths. The paper says the evidence is uncertain and that these measures must be weighed against loneliness, distress, and reduced family well-being.