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Connecticut Nursing Home Owner Puts Staff In On-Site RVs To Prevent COVID-19 Infections

A nurse helps a patient at  Shady Oaks Assisted Living. (Courtesy of Tyson Belanger)
A nurse helps a patient at Shady Oaks Assisted Living. (Courtesy of Tyson Belanger)

In mid-March, it became clear to Bristol, Connecticut, nursing home owner Tyson Belanger that COVID-19 was going to present a challenge to care facilities. He decided to take a unique approach: offering staff up to $20,000 a month for two months to move into RVs he rented and placed on site.

Staff would quarantine with their patients. Two months later there have been no COVID-19 infections at Shady Oaks Assisted Living, while the rest of the state is reporting 1,627 deaths in 219 facilities — about 55% of that state’s total deaths.

Belanger talks to host Robin Young about his plan and how other facilities could make it work.

Watch on YouTube.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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