AARP Nursing Home COVID-19 Dashboard

The COVID-19 pandemic has swept the nation, killing more than 160,000 residents and staff of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. The AARP Public Policy Institute, in collaboration with the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University in Ohio, created the AARP Nursing Home COVID-19 Dashboard to provide four-week snapshots of the virus’ infiltration into nursing homes and impact on nursing home residents and staff, with the goal of identifying specific areas of concern at the national and state levels in a timely manner. The dashboard looks at five categories of impact and will be updated every month to track trends over time. 

In addition, the dashboard site provides a link to state and national fact sheets with 33 additional data points providing more information about each dashboard category.  

This February 2021 dashboard release (with data for the four weeks ending January 17, 2021) shows how the COVID-19 situation in nursing homes has changed dramatically since the summer when data became available:

Among the most concerning data is that relating to staffing shortages.  Staffing shortages continue to be an ongoing problem throughout the pandemic, with 29% of nursing homes reporting a shortage of nurses or aides in the last 4 weeks.  Going back to June 2020, in every four-week period, more than one quarter of nursing homes have reported a shortage of direct care staff.  

The rates of COVID-19 deaths and cases in nursing homes remain staggeringly high as we enter the new year.  The resident death rate reached a new high, increasing from 1.88 per 100 residents in the previous four-week period to 1.95 per 100 residents in the four weeks ending January 17. 

New resident cases declined slightly from 10.8 to 9.2 per 100 residents, and new staff cases also declined from 9.3 to 8.3 per 100 residents.  These most recent case rates are still more than 3 times as high as the rates in late summer and early fall when AARP launched the dashboard, and only slightly lower than the record high numbers the previous month.

Counting both residents and staff, there were nearly 20,000 COVID-19 deaths and more than 170,000 new confirmed COVID-19 cases in nursing homes in the four weeks ending January 17.

There is considerable variation across states in both the magnitude of COVID-19 impacts, and the trajectory of those impacts.

Compared to the previous four weeks ending December 20, the resident death rate per 100 residents increased in 24 states (including Washington DC), and declined in 27 states.

Compared to the four weeks ending December 20, the rates of new resident cases and new staff cases each declined in two-thirds of states (34 states) and increased in the remaining third (17 states, including Washington DC). 

In every state, nursing homes continue to indicate a shortage of PPE (defined as not having a one-week supply of N95 masks, surgical masks, gowns, gloves, and eye protection during the last four weeks). Nationally, about 14% of nursing homes had a PPE shortage during the four weeks ending January 17, 2021.  This is a significant improvement from 18% in the previous monthly Dashboard and 28% in the summer.  Still, this means that about 1 in 7 nursing homes do not have a one-week supply of PPE during a time when deaths and are close to record highs. There is considerable variation in PPE supply among states: the proportion of nursing homes without a one-week supply of PPE ranged from less than 2% to as high as 42%.