Michigan doesn't know true nursing-home toll from COVID

Steve Delie, a lawyer with the Mackinac Center, and I have learned that the state of Michigan did in fact conduct a study with a limited sample last summer to find out if people on this vital records list were residents of long-term care facilities. Exactly 1,468 vital records were selected from March through June 2020. Of those, 648 deaths were traced back to nursing homes and other long-term facilities. That's 44 percent. Nearly half. Apply 44 percent to the nearly 7,000 vital records and there may be another 3,000 deaths of the institutionalized elderly unaccounted for. If that is the case, the number of “nursing home” deaths now climbs to 8,900.