Coronavirus Deaths at U.S. Nursing Homes Pass 3,800, With 45 at Virginia Facility

Canterbury has better access to protective gear now than it did a month ago, Dr. Wright said, but staff members still do not have enough disposable gowns to put on a new one every time they switch patients. Instead, they have patient-specific gowns that they reuse. About 20 staff members have fallen ill with the virus, he said.

Dr. Wright is also the only doctor currently at Canterbury after another doctor, fearing he had been exposed to the virus, quarantined himself. But after 14 days, he did not return. Dr. Wright said his departure left the nursing home in “a bit of a crunch.”

To keep up with the devastating toll the virus was taking on the facility’s patients, Jennie Webb-Wright, Dr. Wright’s wife, who is also a physician with a nearby hospital system, spent three weeks volunteering at the Canterbury facility.

The nursing home’s chronic shortage of nurses as well as its population of older, poor residents, most of whom rely on Medicaid, made it easy for the virus to wreak havoc. Still, the pervasiveness of the virus took staff members by surprise.

“We were shocked,” Dr. Wright said. “We thought we had it relatively contained until the results started coming in. And that revealed to us how far behind we were.”

He warned that he does expect more deaths, but said that the virus — finally — appeared to be letting up. Residents are recovering, and the rates of deaths and new cases have both dropped.

“That’s a hopeful sign,” he said.

Reporting was contributed by Sarah Almukhtar, Rob Gebeloff, John Leland, Alison Saldanha, Timothy Williams and Karen Yourish.