Thread by @Avik

New @FREOPP: The share of U.S. #COVID19 deaths occurring in nursing homes & assisted living facilities has gone up to 43% in our latest scouring of state data. freopp.org/the-covid-19-n… That means that the share of June COVID deaths in long-term care facilities is even higher.

Remember that only 0.6% of Americans live in long-term care facilities, and yet they account for 43% of all #COVID19 deaths. In New Jersey, 11% of all nursing home & assisted living facility residents have died from COVID.

Here's how the map of LTC deaths as a share of LTC residents looked on June 1:

And here's how the map of LTC deaths as a share of overall COVID deaths looked on June 1:

These trends are essential to understanding recent trends re COVID deaths, hospitalizations, and cases. Are the hospitalizations among the elderly, who are at highest risk of death? Or among younger individuals, whose risk of death or serious illness is much lower?

FWIW, we've now been able to obtain data from 48 states plus DC. When we first started compiling this data, numerous states were refusing to report it. We're finally making progress thanks to @SeemaCMS requiring nursing homes to directly report their COVID deaths to @CMSGov.

Having said that, the @CMSGov data remains choppy, because nursing homes aren't required to report deaths before May 5, and because CMS dataset doesn't include assisted living facilities (for less medically vulnerable seniors). So we're sticking with state-reported data for now.