HOLYOKE, MASS. (WHDH) - State lawmakers are holding a hearing Wednesday on the status of the state-run Holyoke Soldiers’ Home amid the coronavirus pandemic.
This comes after a resident tested positive for COVID-19, months after an outbreak claimed the lives of dozens of veterans at the facility.
The veteran had recovered from the virus but started showing symptoms again and was taken to an area hospital, where they later tested positive, according to the state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services.
This case led to the suspension of visitations at the facility as the remaining residents get tested.
Paul Barabani, a member of the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home Coalition, said during the Wednesday hearing that he recommended changes to policies years ago, which he thinks could have changed the way the coronavirus affected residents and staff.
“What if they had listened to my request for additional staff and the creation of individual rooms in the renovation? How many of these deaths would have been prevented if they had listened and acted?” he pondered.
A scathing independent investigation identified “substantial errors and failures by the Home’s leadership that likely contributed to the death toll during the outbreak.”
The most substantial error made by the Home’s leadership team came on March 27, when they decided to move all veterans from one of the two locked dementia units into the other locked dementia unit, where they would be crowded in with the veterans already living there, investigators said.
A $176 million class-action civil rights lawsuit has since been filed against the Home’s superintendent, Bennett Walsh, as well as other administrators.
Investigators said that Walsh was unfit to preside over the facility.
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