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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is floating the idea of reopening nursing homes to visitors who want to see their loved ones. However, the state continues to suffer from a surge in coronavirus cases.
On Tuesday, DeSantis held a roundtable discussion. The topic at hand? The challenges that nursing homes and other long-term care facilities face amid the pandemic.
Nursing homes remain closed to visitors so that residents are at a lower risk of being infected with the novel coronavirus. DeSantis lamented about how four and a half months of having no visitors is a “long time.”
He is now considering allowing some people to visit the facilities, despite the virus being more widespread now than it was when facilities first started to close.
“I think that if you have a way forward, I think that would put a lot of people at ease knowing that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel,” said DeSantis. “What could we definitely do right now? One of the things I think we can do is any family member who has COVID antibodies should be allowed to go visit the facilities.”
He added, “I mean, if you test positive for that, we know that that confers a certain level of immunity. Most people think [immunity lasts] about six months at a minimum.”
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Scientists disagree about whether immunity can last six months, however. So far, they have not determined the length of immunity for those who test positive.
Generally, the consensus is that folks who get covid-19 gain at least some immunity. However, no consensus exists that says a positive test indicates a person is immune for six months.
Another concern is the accuracy of the antibody tests. Some of those tests even detect antibodies from other coronaviruses that produce similar symptoms. This can cause a false positive.
However, the governor stressed that the visits could help alleviate serious emotional damage. For example, if a resident is suffering from something like rheumatoid arthritis, a loved one could visit to help lift their spirits.
“We’ve got to figure out some way to not only protect folks from the virus, but also address some of the serious emotional damage that has been done by our countermeasures to the virus,” said DeSantis.
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