Nursing home operators are taking advantage of an expanded emergency preparedness law passed by Congress in 2020 to shield themselves from COVID-related wrongful death lawsuits.
The law â the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act â was expanded by Congress last spring to shield some healthcare providers from legal liability during emergency circumstances, a Saturday report by POLITICO explained.
Guidance from federal legal offices has interpreted the law as providing cover for decisions made by nursing home operators regarding COVID-19 vaccines.
âThe advisory clarifies that nursing homes and other facilities should earn this immunity as long as they made reasonable considerations about virus mitigation measures, regardless of whether they actually followed through. Only those totally disregarding such measures would fail to be covered by liability protections,â the report explained.
Scientists play catch-up with Covid therapies
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U.S. health officials are racing to find new Covid therapies
, and have turned to antiviral medications as a way to keep mildly sick patients from getting sicker. Nursing homes are pointing to the Trump administration s broad interpretation of a law to ward off wrongful death lawsuits from bereaved families.
Nursing homes invoke Trump-era protections to fight lawsuits over Covid deaths
As they try to fend off scores of lawsuits, nursing homes are seeking legal cover from liability protections extended by Congress and the Trump administration.
Dozens of these nursing homes facing wrongful death lawsuits, which often tally millions of dollars, are urging judges to move the litigation from state courts to federal courts, where they can invoke the new federal liability protections and potentially avoid massive payouts. | AP Photo/John Minchillo
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Nursing homes are increasingly seeking to shield themselves from a raft of wrongful death lawsuits from the families of Covid-19 victims by invoking new liability protections they received from Washington last year as the coronavirus tore through the facilities.
Nursing homes invoke Trump-era protections to fight lawsuits over Covid deaths msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Lawsuits detail trauma from family separations at the Arizona border as victims begin quest for justice Rafael Carranza, Arizona Republic
Court documents described the moments of anguish that Eliot, a Guatemalan migrant who traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum, and his then-11-year-old son, Héctor, experienced in the minutes before the U.S. government forcibly separated them under its zero-tolerance policy.
The two had crossed the border near Lukeville, in southwestern Arizona, on May 19, 2018, more than a month after then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that all adults, including parents traveling with children, would be prosecuted if they crossed the southwestern U.S. border illegally.