Underreporting of Early Nursing Home COVID-19 Cases and Deaths in Federal Data

Elizabeth M. While, PhD, APRN

Introduction

The initial US epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic was a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington, in late February 2020.1 This event was a foreshadowing of the catastrophic and disproportionate toll COVID-19 would take on nursing home residents over the course of the pandemic. However, measuring the true impact of COVID-19 in nursing homes is challenging owing to inconsistent data collection in the early months of the pandemic.