The Last Days of Loneliness
Long-term-care residents who have been confined to their rooms for months have to wait a bit longer before they can finally receive a vaccine.
I expected Mary Ellen Scott to sound sad. This year—Scott’s 18th as a resident of the Montrose Health Center in southeastern Iowa—has been especially hard on people in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities. Nationwide, nearly 40 percent of all coronavirus-related deaths have happened in long-term-care facilities; my grandmother died of COVID-19 in April after contracting the virus in her Minneapolis assisted-living community. In these places, many residents who have been confined to their rooms for months are now counting down the last lonely days before they can finally receive a vaccine.
Scott, though, was chipper when she answered
