Gov. Phil Murphy is sending the New Jersey National Guard to the Andover Subacute and Rehabilitation Center on Friday, a 699-bed facility where 17 were found dead last month in what was described as a makeshift morgue, and a total of 66 have died overall from COVID-19.
That marks a total of 120 National Guard troops that will shore up staffing at health care centers struggling with their response to the virus, Murphy said.
The Andover facility now finds itself at the end of state oversight and potential scrutiny for criminal wrongdoing, as state data shows long-term care facilities accounting for just over half New Jersey’s COVID-19 fatalities.
State Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli at Gov. Phil Murphy’s May 6, 2020 COVID-19 press briefing in Trenton. – RICH HUNDLEY, THE TRENTONIAN
The troops will be stationed at the Andover facility seven days a week and arrive on Friday, according to New Jersey Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli. A number of them were there Thursday for survey work, and 22 will be at the facility on Friday.
They will handle nurse aid assistance, “janitorial duties such as cleaning and disinfectant, culinary services” and “logistics work such as managing the [personal protective equipment] supply,” Persichilli said.
“Andover Subacute II welcomes the assistance from the New Jersey National Guard, as the state makes more resources available to help deal with the pandemic,” reads a statement from Mutty Scheinbaum, the site’s owner and operator.
“The Guard will help provide non-medical support in long-term care facilities, which will free up medical staff to spend more time on patient care.”
Scheinbaum maintained that despite steps the facility took, and aid from outside groups, the “overall system was inundated, and many entities were simply not in a position to help.”
As of the latest state data, 513 of the state’s 675 long-term care centers, including senior centers, nursing and veteran homes, had COVID-19 outbreaks. Out of the 133,635 total positive COVID-19 cases across the state, 24,874 of them were at long-term care facilities. And out of the 8,801 deaths across the state, over half of them – 4,556 – were at one of the state’s long-term care centers.
“We don’t take this step lightly, but the crisis in our long-term care facilities requires us to take it,” the governor said.
On Wednesday, Murphy said he was hiring two national health care experts – Cindy Mann, who was deputy administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under former U.S. President Barack Obama, and Carole Raphael, who was previously the board chair at the American Association of Retired Persons, or AARP – to scrutinize the state’s long-term centers for long-standing issues and potential improvements.
Attorney General Gurbir Grewal during a daily COVID-19 press briefing in Trenton on May 5, 2020. – JOSEPH LAMBERTI, COURIER POST
“The industry does not have it within themselves to make the changes they need. If they had, they would have done it already,” Murphy said on Tuesday. “I want to be definitive and unambiguous on that. And change will be coming.”
Mann and Raphael will look at “what additional protocols, resources and equipment should be put in place,” Persichilli said on Wednesday.
“They’ll look at outbreak protocols, they’ll address mitigation, protection, resiliency against future outbreaks,” Persichilli said.
State authorities have been looking at long-term centers where there have been a “disproportionate number of deaths,” Murphy said on Tuesday, such as that at Andover.
“We are not alleging any misconduct … but we will evaluate whether some facilities put profits over patients,” New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said Tuesday “We are looking back and we will hold people accountable if anything criminal happened.”
“We’ll simply follow the facts and the law wherever they lead us,” Grewal said, be it criminal or civil charges, civil liability, or simply a corrective action plan.
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 4:28 p.m. EST on May 7, 2020 to include comments from Andover Subacute II owner and operator Mutty Scheinbaum.
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