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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowMore than 1,300 Indiana National Guardsmen will be deployed to more than 500 nursing homes and long-term residential care facilities over the next three weeks to help the nursing staff with routine health screenings, data entry and paperwork in order to free those staff members up to tend to patients.
Brig. Gen Dale Lyles, the adjutant general of the Guard, on Wednesday said the deployment will occur in stages, with about 300 guardsmen initially working in 133 facilities by Nov. 2. That will increase to 750 Guardsmen in 250 facilities by Nov. 9, and finally reach its peak of 1,350 Guardsmen in all 534 long-term care facilities across Indiana by mid-November.
“Guardsmen are deploying to help prevent infection in their communities,” he said.
Gov. Eric Holcomb, who announced the deployment last week, said the move is designed to protect Indiana’s “most vulnerable”—the elderly and infirm in nursing homes and residential communities. Nearly half of all COVID-19 hospitalizations in Indiana involve patients who are 70 or older, he said in his weekly press briefing Wednesday.
“It’s just critical that we do everything we can to help bring that number down, not just to save lives, but also to save valuable resources as well,” Holcomb said. “Our hospitals are under a tremendous amount of pressure.”
Indiana’s nursing homes and long-term residential facilities are home to about 65,000 people.
The guardsmen are being trained this week at Camp Atterbury by a contractor that specializes in infection control, Lyles said. All guardsmen will receive a COVID-19 test before being sent to a long-term care facilities and will be tested and monitored through their service. The deployment will last approximately through the end of the year, Lyles said.
The soldiers will help the nursing home staffs with infection-control measures and monitoring routines, filling out COVID-19 protection checklists, entering the data into computer files, doing screening and wellness checks, and registering all staff and visitors. That routine work is designed to free up the nursing staff to help patients.
The Indiana Department of Health will provide Guardsmen with scrubs and personal protective equipment, including N95 and surgical masks, gloves, goggles and gowns.
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