Confinement of staff with residents in nursing homes: a solution against COVID-19?

The Coronarovirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) outbreak strongly affected nursing and was responsible for a high mortality rate. During the pandemic of March-May 2020, 17 French nursing homes organized staff confinement periods with residents 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, to reduce the risk of entry of the SARS-CoV-2 virus into their facilities, in a context where visits to residents were prohibited. By means of a telephone survey of their directors, we observed that 16 nursing homes (94%) had no cases of COVID-19 among the residents, and that mortality from COVID-19 was very low compared to that recorded at the national level by Sante publique France (p<10(-4)). Moreover, the number of cases of Covid-19 among the staff of these nursing homes was also lower than that recorded by Sante publique France (p<10(-4)). These establishments experienced certain difficulties which the directors managed to overcome and the investment of these teams was widely appreciated by the families of the residents and through the press.