Ann Arbor Times

In response to a new order by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), Sen. Lana Theis (R-Brighton) issued a statement on MiSenateGOP responding to the order.  

Director Robert Gordon has issued an order requiring that the state’s nursing homes regularly test and report cases and deaths of COVID-19 and that the inventory of personal protective equipment and staffing numbers is reported.

Theis said that the order came too late for many individuals who have already died due to the state’s failure to take action sooner. 

“Over one-third of all COVID-19-related deaths in the state — and most of the deaths in Livingston and Washtenaw counties — occurred among patients from nursing homes,” Theis said in her statement on MiSenateGOP. “This incredible loss of life likely could have been mitigated had MDHHS not made the decision to bring COVID-19 patients into these facilities in the first place. I called on the administration to put a stop to it back in April before the first nursing-home-related executive order was issued.”

Theis said that the treatment of those who'd contracted the virus should have been handled differently prior to this order. 

“COVID-19-positive patients shouldn’t have been placed in the same facility as our most vulnerable citizens, especially before the requirements in Director Gordon’s most recent order were possible,” Theis to MiSenateGOP. “Frankly, this announcement only brings more questions, and the people of Michigan deserve answers they have been waiting months to receive: Why now, and why didn’t you protect them sooner?”

In April, Theis was worried about putting patients who had previously tested positive for the virus into nursing homes, and she even composed a letter on April 14 to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Chief Medical Executive Dr. Joneigh Khaldun and the Livingston County Health Department.

In the letter, Theis suggested that "this practice be immediately discontinued and that such persons be relocated to alternative sites, perhaps including existing field hospitals that have been constructed for the express purpose of treating COVID-19.”

This said that she has not yet received a reply to her letter.