Whistleblower Details Coronavirus Nursing Home Shortfalls

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK — Elderly people locked alone in rooms. Rampant dehydration. Weeks without contact with loved ones. Bodies piling up in makeshift morgues.

Those are the scenes an anonymous whistleblower and two prominent New York City elected officials painted Tuesday of how the coronavirus outbreak has affected the city's nursing homes.

The whistleblower — "Jane Doe" — appeared only in silhouette and spoke only with voice distortion on a teleconference call for fear her relative housed in a Crown Heights/Flatbush-area home would face retaliation.

"Right now the residents appear to be just like detainees," she said.

Roughly 2,000 coronavirus deaths have happened in New York City region nursing homes, according to a recent New York Times story.

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Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and city Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who jointly hosted the whistleblower's teleconference, called for an investigation into nursing home conditions during the outbreak.

"The virus does not discriminate but policies and practices and procedures in this city and state and country continue to discriminate in those communities that are poor and of color," Adams said. "Nothing we believe really personifies that more than what is happening in nursing homes."

Adams and Williams detailed calls they received from nursing home residents about lack of personal protective equipment, long periods spent in isolation and facilities being turned into makeshift morgues.

Workers at Crown Heights Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Brooklyn told the New York Times that their facility set up one such morgue after 15 residents died from the coronavirus and funeral homes couldn't take the bodies.

The whistleblower called many staff at her relative's nursing home "angels" for the amount of care they display. Others, however, weren't so heavenly, she said.

Some staff don't change clothes after arriving to work on public transportation, Doe said. Residents, including her loved one, have spent weeks locked behind closed doors, she said.

"Some of them have declined and deteriorated in a month," she said.

Williams called on Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo to address the issue.

“We don’t have the luxury of time in responding to this,” he said.

There are 40 nursing homes in Brooklyn alone out of 170 citywide, Adams said. He called on the state to provide full protective gear for nursing homes, authority for the state attorney general's office to set up a hotline and conduct random inspections and, most importantly, full teleconferencing at facilities so loved ones can see each other during the lockdown.

"This is truly traumatic that you can’t see your loved one when they’re in nursing home facilities," Adams said.

The entire teleconference can be viewed here.

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