TRENTON – New Jersey Senator Joe Pennachio claimed veterans housed at New Jersey’s veteran homes, which were spotlighted for rampant COVID-19 fatalities during the pandemic are not doing much better in the years since.
Pennachio is blaming Governor Phil Murphy for the deaths of even more veterans at one home.
A report released by inspectors found the state’s Veteran’s Memorial Home at Menlo park has placed residents in “immediate jeopardy” as a new strain of COVID-19 swept through the facility last summer.
“The continuing failures are a result of the Murphy administration never being investigated or held accountable for massive pandemic mismanagement,” he said.
Pennachio responded to the report.
“As we prepare to celebrate Veterans Day later this week, the new report is a sad reminder that the Murphy administration continues to fail in its duty to protect the residents of the Menlo Park Veterans Memorial Home,” said Pennacchio (R-26). “It’s shocking to hear that residents have been physically and verbally abused by their supposed caregivers. It’s also beyond belief that they still haven’t implemented effective infection control procedures after nearly 200 residents died in veterans homes at the start of the pandemic. Our veterans deserve so much better.”
The report said 19 veterans died at the home during the August 2021 outbreak inside the facility.
In addition to finding “a serious and immediate threat to the safety and well-being” of residents, inspectors found untrained caregivers and instances of physical and verbal abuse of residents. The findings were detailed in a nearly 300-page report, Pennachio said outside the home.
“Every effort to understand what went wrong in our veterans homes and nursing homes has been blocked by legislative Democrats and the Murphy administration,” added Pennacchio. “After nearly three years, the Governor still has not conducted the long-promised ‘postmortem’ of his administration’s pandemic response. If he does finally issue a self-critique, it’s likely to be as transparent as tar. Until we conduct a thorough, independent investigation of the systemic mismanagement of our veterans homes since the start of the pandemic, we will never fully solve the problems that continue to lead to the unnecessary loss of life.”