From KERA:
It’s been about two and a half years since Tricia Myers’ family decided to move her 95-year-old mother into the Cottonwood Creek Healthcare Community in Richardson. Myers said her mother, who has dementia, needed round-the-clock care when her cognitive health began to decline.
“She was unable to feed herself, care for herself hygiene-wise,” Myers said. “The dementia, of course, she would get turned around in her own home, so it was just getting to be unsafe for her.”
In late March, Dallas County began seeing clusters of COVID-19 transmission at nursing homes and assisted living centers. The outbreak exposed how easily infectious disease can spread within these communities, where many residents have underlying health conditions and live very close to each other. To date, more than a third of COVID-19-related deaths in the county have been associated with long-term care facilities.
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