Coronavirus Watch: Investigating nursing home deaths during the pandemic

In a first-of-its-kind analysis, Paste BN has identified nursing home ownership webs invisible to consumers. Problems across chains eluded the federal officials overseeing nursing homes, who focused on failures at individual facilities during the pandemic.

Reporters scored the performance of every nursing home in America to probe questions of corporate responsibility left unanswered by dozens of research papers on COVID’s more than 140,000 nursing home deaths.

The investigation found a nursing home chain that reported its residents had died of COVID-19 last winter at rates well above the national average.

Take a look at the full project here.

It's Wednesday, and this is Coronavirus Watch from the Paste BN Network. Here's more news to know:

• United Airlines announced it will allow employees who are unvaccinated for medical or religious reasons to return to work starting March 28 after previously being put on unpaid leave.
• A potential new COVID-19 variant, a combination of the delta and omicron variants, has been identified in France, the Netherlands and Denmark, according to the WHO.
• Tennis player Novak Djokovic announced that he has withdrawn from two U.S. tournaments due to his unvaccinated status, which prevents him from traveling to the country.

See our COVID-19 resource guide here. See total reported cases and deaths here. On vaccinations: About 76% of people in the U.S. have received at least one vaccine shot, and about 65% are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.

– Cady Stanton, Paste BN digital editor fellow, @cady_stanton