An anonymous tip in New Jersey led to the discovery of 17 bodies crammed inside of a four-person morgue at one of the state’s largest nursing homes this week.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer confirmed to NBC New York that the bodies were discovered at the Andover Subacute and Rehabilitation Center I and II in Sussex County, New Jersey. He revealed that just prior to the discovery, he was contacted by an administrator at the nursing home who was requesting more body bags.
“She called and said, ‘We’re overwhelmed here,” he said on a Skype call. He added that the administrator who called was also sick as well as “so many” other staff members at the home.
With the 17 people discovered in the small morgue, the death toll for the nursing home stands at 68, Gottheimer confirmed, with twenty-six of those who died testing positive for COVID-19. Two staff members are among the dead.
Eric C. Danielson, the town’s chief of police, told The New York Times that “they were just overwhelmed by the amount of people who were expiring.”
On Thursday, Andover Township Mayor Michael Lensak and Danielson told NBC News that first responders assisted in the transfer of 13 of the bodies to refrigerator trucks. The nursing home is severely understaffed, the two went on to say.
Currently, seventy-six patients at the home have coronavirus, as well as 41 staff members, according to the Times.
The nursing home said it was separating infected patients from healthy ones to help slow the spread. However, it has been increasingly difficult to contain the virus.
“Once one person in the home gets sick, it spreads pretty quickly in nursing homes,” Rep. Gottheimer said. “We’re seeing this around the state.”
The congressman’s office and state officials are working to come up with a solution for the Andover facility and get the home what it needs. However, this is proven harder with the “huge nursing shortages” across New Jersey. On Wednesday, Gottheimer contacted both FEMA and the Secretary of Health and Human Services to see if federal resources could be made available for the home.
So far, 5,670 people in nursing homes in the U.S have died from coronavirus, according to an NBC News analysis. Currently, there are 3,466 long-term care facilities in 39 states with known coronavirus cases, as the elderly population remains at heightened risk for coronavirus related complications and death.
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