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Among the many tragic stories in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida are the deaths of seven Louisiana nursing home residents who were evacuated to a warehouse where health inspectors say conditions quickly became unsafe once the storm struck. The squalid conditions found at the Tangipahoa Parish warehouse that sheltered more than 840 people raised new questions and concerns about whether Louisiana is doing enough to protect its most vulnerable residents. (Deslatte, 9/12)

It’s only been a week since 843 nursing home residents were rescued from a partially flooded warehouse in Tangipahoa Parish where they were living in squalor after Hurricane Ida, but the lawsuits are already piling up. At least four separate lawsuits have been filed this week in Orleans, Jefferson and East Baton Rouge parishes over the ordeal, each of them naming Bob Dean and the seven nursing homes he owns as defendants. The suits make a number of claims against Dean, but a persistent theme across them is that Dean violated the bill of rights that’s enshrined in state law for nursing home residents. (Gallo, Simerman and Russell, 9/11)

More than 68,000 COVID-19 cases and 16,000 related deaths in US nursing homes may have gone uncounted because they occurred before federal guidelines required facilities to report case and death data in late May 2020, suggests a study yesterday in JAMA Network Open. Led by a Harvard University researcher, the study compared the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths reported by 15,415 nursing homes in 20 states to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) with those reported to state departments of health by May 24, 2020. Analysis took place from December 2020 to May 2021. (Van Beusekom, 9/10)

Researchers at Brown University will study waning COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness among nursing home residents to further inform the country’s booster shot rollout. The two-year study, aimed to inform real-time policy decisions, was awarded $4.9 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The team is set to study the duration of protective immunity among 800-1,200 nursing home residents following vaccination or when administered a booster shot, when federally recommended to do so, given emerging COVID-19 variants, according to a news release. Researchers plan to share interim data with the CDC as it becomes available. (Rivas, 9/11)

The handwritten doctor’s order was just eight words long, but it solved a problem for Dundee Manor, a nursing home in rural South Carolina struggling to handle a new resident with severe dementia. David Blakeney, 63, was restless and agitated. The home’s doctor wanted him on an antipsychotic medication called Haldol, a powerful sedative. “Add Dx of schizophrenia for use of Haldol,” read the doctor’s order, using the medical shorthand for “diagnosis.” But there was no evidence that Mr. Blakeney actually had schizophrenia. (Thomas, Gebeloff and Silver-Greenberg, 9/11)