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Nearly 26,000 nursing home residents have died from COVID-19, the government reported Monday, as federal officials demanded states carry out more inspections and vowed higher fines for facilities with poor infection control. The partial numbers released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are certain to go higher, as only about 80% of nursing homes have reported. Also, the federal data does not include assisted living facilities, which some states count in their coronavirus totals. (Alonso-Zaldivar and Choi, 6/1)

The CMS rule that mandated the data collection, issued May 8, didn’t require nursing homes to report deaths and cases that occurred before early May. Also, assisted-living facilities, which aren’t regulated by CMS, didn’t have to submit any information, though they could do so voluntarily. CMS Administrator Seema Verma said the agency believed that the “vast majority” of nursing homes had provided data from before May 8, though CMS said about 20% of the nation’s 15,400 nursing homes had not reported required data by May 24. Ms. Verma said CMS couldn’t require the facilities to report information from before the rule took effect. (Kamp and Wilde Mathews, 6/1)

CMS also announced Monday that it will be stepping up fines for nursing homes that fail to sufficiently control infections. Nursing homes that have previously been cited for lax infection control could receive fines ranging from $5,000 to $20,000. (Jaffe, 6/1)

According to the latest NBC News tally, nearly 40,000 coronavirus deaths are associated with nursing homes, assisted living and other long-term care facilities since the beginning of the pandemic — representing almost 40 percent of all coronavirus deaths in the U.S. The NBC News tally is also likely to be an undercount, as a handful of states have still not released their nursing home death tolls. (Khimm and Strickler, 6/2)

Only about 80 percent of the country's 15,400 Medicare and Medicaid nursing homes have reported the required data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nursing homes that don't report will be subject to fines. (Weixel, 6/1)

Federal stimulus checks aren’t reaching a growing number of seniors in Pennsylvania’s long-term-care homes, depriving them of money needed now more than ever to connect with family amid a pandemic that has overcome their facilities and isolated them from visitors. The reasons vary from apparent misunderstandings to facilities wrongly holding onto the $1,200 or, in one extreme case, threatening to evict residents unless they turned over the funds, according to watchdog advocates as well as state agencies that oversee the homes. (Pattani, 6/2)

Residents in nursing homes—and the staff who care for them—have been among the hardest hit by COVID-19. They represent an outsize portion of deaths from the disease. About 5,900 residents have died in New York's nursing homes, or about 20% of the 29,500 who have or are presumed to have died from COVID-19 in the state as of May 26, according to data from the state and Johns Hopkins University. Nursing home residents make up about 1.2% of New York's population. (LaMantia, 6/1)

Ten weeks after asking nursing homes and other senior long-term care facilities to prohibit all outside visitors and non-essential health personnel, the Baker administration is easing the guidelines. (Wasser, 6/1)