McKnight’s Long-Term Care News author, Alicia Lasek, reports that medical experts believe that the impact and treatment of chronic diseases, as well as COVID-19 on nursing home residents, must be seriously considered as the United States moves into a phase of normalcy. The article mentions that policies concerning “biomedical research, vaccines, and infrastructure to tackle the COVID-19 virus” should receive significant financial funding. However, medical experts from the Journal of General Internal Medicine think policymakers are not considering the impact of how chronic diseases can intensify the COVID-19 virus in addition to the unequal hardships COVID-19 has imposed on impoverished communities and people of color.
These medical experts stress that there is a strong intersection between COVID-19 and chronic diseases; therefore, creating stronger societal hardships and poor consequences for residents. Lasek writes that the journal noted that patients possessing an underlying condition made up “95% of those hospitalized with COVID-19 from March 2020 to March 2021”. The most frequent chronic diseases seen in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 included diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, kidney disease, liver disease, and anxiety disorders.
The medical experts felt that America was by no means the healthiest population before the pandemic, but the COVID-19 caused an even harsher strain on the health of Americans. Several steps are recommended to combat this link between Covid-19 and chronic diseases such as “screening” for chronic diseases at COVID-19 testing sites, advocating for individuals to receive the COVID-19 vaccine along with living a healthy life, supporting faster vaccine distribution across the country, and increasing the response to COVID-19 among “medical systems” organizations located in your community.
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