Up to half the excess deaths in American nursing homes were due to the impact of lockdowns and mitigation measures on frail residents rather than the virus. That’s the conclusion of epidemiologist Professor Eyal Shahar in a new analysis of a study on U.S. nursing home deaths.
The study, published in the Journal of Health Economics in 2022, found that the greater the mitigation efforts in U.S. nursing homes, the higher the death toll during the pandemic. “Those efforts not only largely failed to reduce Covid mortality, but they also added non-Covid deaths. The more they tried to mitigate, the worse the outcome was,” notes Prof. Shahar.
“These results are consistent in three consecutive periods: May through September 2020, September through December 2020, and December 2020 through April 2021. Moreover, the relationship between quality ranking and mortality became stronger over time,” he adds.
The reason was the non-Covid death toll: “The higher the ranking, the higher the number of non-Covid deaths”.
While in the first wave the harsh mitigation measures do appear to have reduced Covid deaths somewhat, this effect was “insufficient” to make-up for the non-Covid deaths associated with a higher ranking. It was also not true for later waves.
Hellbound and Down 