Georgia sends National Guard to senior living communities as Peach State and neighboring Florida announce shelter-in-place orders

Georgia and Florida announced stay-at-home orders Wednesday in an effort to try to stem the spread of COVID-19, bringing the total number of states with such orders to 38, according to one tally.

Wednesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a “safer at home” order that requires “senior citizens” and people with chronic health conditions to stay at their residences and for all others to limit their trips away from home only to “obtain or provide essential services or conduct essential activity.”

The governor had been under increasing pressure to put such an order in place, given that more than 20% of the state’s population consists of adults aged 65 or more years, who are more vulnerable to the disease. The order goes into effect Friday and will expire April 30 unless extended.

As of 6:34 p.m. Wednesday, Florida had 7,773 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including residents and nonresidents, with 101 resident deaths, according to Florida Health.

Shortly after DeSantis announced his order, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said he would sign his shelter-in-place rule today and that it also would go into effect Friday and expire April 30 unless extended.

Kemp also said the state would be activating more than 100 members of the National Guard to help operators and managers of assisted living communities and nursing homes keep residents and patients safe where positive cases of COVID-19 had been found.

“These troops will implement infection control protocols and enhanced sanitation methods to dramatically reduce COVID-19 exposure among vulnerable residents,” he said.

Twenty soldiers headed to Pelham Parkway Nursing Home in Pelham, GA, to audit existing sanitation methods, train staff on utilizing more aggressive infectious disease control measures and thoroughly clean the facility, according to state officials.

The facility has reported five confirmed cases of COVID-19, officials said. For future missions, only four to five soldiers will deploy to a specific facility. Twenty soldiers went to Pelham because they were being trained, they said.

Kemp said the assignment was the first of several missions that will be conducted in cooperation with the Georgia National Guard, the Department of Public Health, the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency, the Georgia Health Care Association and the Georgia Center for Assisted Living.

A team of six National Guard medics recently completed a three-day assignment at a senior living facility in Grafton, WI, where they augmented staff members after a COVID-19 outbreak caused a temporary staffing shortage, according to a media report. That mission concluded late March 23.

In a media briefing Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence said that President Trump had authorized 10 states to use federal funding to pay the National Guard for coronavirus-related missions. “As of this afternoon, FEMA reports some 17,000 National Guard have been activated in states around the country to provide support for coronavirus response,” he said.

In other coronavirus-related news:

• The James R. Smith Family Charitable Foundation, Roanoke, VA, announced Wednesday that it has committed more than $1.2 million to provide disaster relief gifts to frontline associates of its affiliated Harmony Senior Services, based in Charleston, SC. The gifts will be disbursed in two installments to more than 2,300 frontline workers and will range from $150 to $500 per associate, according to the foundation. The company has 38 communities across nine states.
• Toledo, OH-based real estate investment trust Welltower said it has established a distribution center in Dallas from which it will distribute personal protective equipment and other supplies to operating partners. The REIT said it has or will procure approximately 400,000 pairs of gloves, 250,000 face masks and 120,000 isolation gowns, in addition to hand sanitizer, disinfectants and no-touch thermometers. “Welltower has also secured testing kits and has started to facilitate testing capabilities, including the establishment of new relationships with regional and national lab providers,” the company said.
• Denver-based Spectrum Retirement Communities’ eight Phoenix-area communities are the beneficiaries of more than 400 N-95 masks donated by AZ MetroScapes, a commercial landscaping company based in Scottsdale, AZ. “AZ MetroScapes has worked with Spectrum for many years and have a great partnership. When they reached out to see if we had any masks, we immediately checked with our suppliers and purchased what we could from them to donate to the senior living communities,” said AZ MetroScapes owner Hans Heitzinger.
• At a time when industry groups and some other operators are encouraging senior living residents to stay put for their own safety, Jewish Senior Life is requesting that family members take home their loved ones if they are independent living residents, reports the Jewish News, Detroit. “Our independent life communities are not healthcare facilities. We don’t provide daily care for them,” CEO Nancy Heinrich told the media outlet. “We are concerned that if a lot of our residents become ill and have to be isolated, they will not be able to obtain the care that they need to help them get through their illness.” About 34 residents reportedly had moved out as of March 30.
• Three states — Washington, West Virginia and Pennsylvania — are the first to receive federal approval for their Section 1915(c) Appendix K applications, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy. Pennsylvania does not use the Medicaid home- and community-based services waivers for residential assisted living. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services previously had released information explaining how state Medicaid agencies could use Section 1915(c) HCBS waivers in response to the pandemic.
• Treasury Sec. Steven T. Mnuchin announced Wednesday that, contrary to earlier plans, Social Security recipients who do not typically file a tax return will not need to file an abbreviated return in order to receive their stimulus checks. The older adults will receive the payments as a direct deposit or by paper check, however they normally would receive their benefits.
• Thirty-four senators sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joseph Simons asking the FTC to better inform older adults about coronavirus scams and to assist victims in understanding their options for recourse if they are financially exploited during the pandemic.