TAMARAC, Fla. – A South Florida nursing home is about to receive seniors recovering from COVID-19 and it’s a grave concern for families with loved ones at the facility.
The Tamarac Rehabilitation Center is number 19 in Florida's COVID-19 Isolation Centers, the newly designated facilities for patients well enough to leave the hospital, but not yet be back among neighbors at elder care.
"Mind blown," said Danielle Cohen, whose grandfather lives at the Tamarac facility. "After spending four-plus months trying to keep COVID out of the building, here they are telling everyone who is healthy and being cared for that they are bringing it into the building."
Fearing that her grandfather, and the other residents in Tamarac, would be put at risk, Cohen pushed for more information.
"The more I pressed to find out who was forcing this and making them bring COVID into the building, the more pushback I got," she said, adding that one person told her, "I don't need to get into specifics with you."
Clearly there was a shortfall in communications with frightened families who had been told from the get-go that elder care is the focus of protection.
The Andrew Weisman, CEO of the Tamarac Rehabilitation Center, told Local 10 News he volunteered, offered a wing of his facility as an isolation center.
“It’s a perfect architectural layout for us to develop a truly isolated unit,” he said. “It’s also about the hospitals that are really having problems with a surge in demand and the availability of beds. That’s really the crisis.”