donkey tonight. if you're really lonely, maybe just let the bedbugs bite a little. this is "nightline." tonight, tinder box. covid-19 and the long-term care crisis. >> some of them would crash real fast, like nothing i've ever seen before in my life. >> nursing homes. first flash point of the pandemic. the staggering loss of life spreading across the nation. now the accusations the trump administration could have done more to save lives. >> we don't have testing in nursing homes. we don't have personal protective equipment. things are going to get bad. plus, answering back. one on one with seema verma, white house task force member. "nightline" will be right back.

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we're here to help with the community driven promise. good evening. thank you for joining us. across the nation, members of the greatest generation have been left especially vulnerable to the wrath of covid-19. nursing home deaths now top 11,000 in 26 states. now many are saying more could and should have been done to protect the elderly before things spun out of control.

here's abc's kaylee hartung. >> reporter: in the war against covid-19, this is one of the places the fight is most intense. but instead of guns, these soldiers are using d disinfectants. >> we've been treating facilities that take care of georgia's most vulnerable residents to covid-19. >> now to the staggering toll. >> the outbreak is taking a toll on nursing homes. >> the governor issuing a series of mandates, including limiting visitors to nursing homes. >> reporter: an abc news tally, counting over 10,000 deaths in 26 states. i was there as the outbreak began in kirkland, washington. we'd just seen another person loaded up into an ambulance to be taken to the hospital. >> reporter: and over the weeks, the body count has continued to rise. 49 in virginia. >> one of the deadliest covid-19 outbreaks at any assisted living

facility in the country. >> reporter: just this week, in andover, new jersey. >> we're taking very special care of our nursing homes and our seniors. >> reporter: critics say the administration has mishandled the situation on multiple fronts. >> clearly the federal government has been slow. they said well, we're not really responsible. the states are responsible. to this day, we still have the trump administration battling governors of both political parties. >> reporter: some pointing to the shortages of protective equipment and testing in the facilities. >> we've been saying for the last month and a half that if we don't have testing in nursing homes, if we don't have personal protective equipment, things are going to get bad. >> reporter: others calling out the low wages of many nursing

home workers. >> those who care for young kids and those who care for our parents and grandparents in these facilities are often among the lowest paid of our workers. >> as we look back at the trump track record, they constantly minimize what this was all about. >> reporter: senator ron widen cosigned a letter that says before the pandemic the trump administration repeatedly weakened nursing home safety standards that put residents to risk. >> he ththey rolled back recommendations with respect to preparedness. >> reporter: weiden's letter coming as the first coronavirus unfolded. >> it should have been a wakeup call. >> reporter: the virus began its silent assault on the life care facility in kirkland, washington in january. by february, the 911 calls

poured in. one after another. >> he is deteriorating in his health condition. >> reporter: and another. >> 911, emergency. >> medical, please. >> is there a life care center? >> correct. >> what are her symptoms today? >> sweat beining, having a hard breathing. >> reporter: at the end of february the center came to realize covid-19 had infiltrated their facility. life care saying they grieve with the families who have lost loved ones, people who were important members of our professional family. residents continue to be monitored very closely. by early march, the federal government was compelled to issue guidance, to screen res visitors. >> seniors and americans with underlying conditions are technically vulnerable. >> reporter: at the time, 159 cases of covid-19 were reported around the country, yet, this

was still eight days before a national emergency was declared about the covid-19 outbreak. >> as soon as we saw cases taking place in kirkland, we should have recognized this is an alarm bell that is not just specific to one care facility but actually has repercussions across the u.s. >> reporter: to date, 37 lives at life care in kirkland lost. a heavy toll on the employees who were inside. >> i knew a lot of the patients. and, and some of them had been there for a really long time. some of them would crash real fast. they'd go from zero symptoms to crashing in three hours. the turn around time was incredible. it's like nothing i've ever seen before in my life. >> reporter: in the wake of kirkland, mark parkinson, the president of the american health for nursing homes believes the federal government should have

prioritized testing. >> a nursing home resident who has symptoms of covid, even if they have underlying health conditions is a priority level too. so what that means is we can get them a test that we probably can't get test results for seven to ten days, and a lot of really bad things can happen in seven to ten days. >> reporter: as the outbreak continued spreading across the country, state regularities found themselves fighting a losing battle. >> at the facility, we've had 108 individuals test positive for covid-19. of those 108, 39 of those individuals have been showing symptoms. >> reporter: the health director inhmd, virni he to contain the virus by isolating residents showing symptoms. >> i was not necessarily surprised by the number of total

positives but rather it was the number of people who were positive that were not showing symptoms at all. if you don't have symptoms, it's very hard to make a decision to isolate people. by the time it was identified, there was probably a huge amount of transmission events without people even knowing they'd been infected, and that made it incredibly difficult to control. >> reporter: part of covid-19's cunning, the way it hides and shows no symptoms. and, with asymptomatic carriers moving freely about, the can canterbury center found itself surpassing kirkland, 49 residents dead in three weeks. >> i didn't realize until the news article came out that they had a null of deaths there. >> reporter: precious turner's uncle lives in the canterbury center now and says he has tested covid-19 positive and relies on the staff there to keep him safe. >> these people are risking their life every day to go in to

work to take care of my uncle. >> reporter: canterbury credits its staff for perilous work during an unprecedented time. personal care aides made an average of around $24,000 a year in 2018. and now, some of these aides are putting their own lives on the line for the residents. at this facility outside columbus, ohio, the employees have even volunteered to lock themselves in with the residents to avoid a symptomatic spread and give the vulnerable their best shot at survival. >> between 22 and 24 individuals volunteered to give up everything outside this world, whether it's being with their kids or taking care of their own parents to come here and take care of our residents and our loved ones here. >> reporter: the facility says with the lockdown, they still don't have any covid-19 patients. >> we need to have folks who have health care backgrounds to be rallying around these facilities and flocking in them

to help in the same way we saw in the hospitals. >> reporter: in some states, local volunteers have taken it upon themselves to help out. >> right now we're gathering the donations that we've been able to procure. >> reporter: leanne spitzer and her group have mobilized to support the andover sub acute. >> they've asked anything we can do, any kind of ppe protection that we can get to get to them, they are putting their life on the line every day to take care of these people and they really need the recognition they deserve. >> reporter: it's a nursing home this group says for weeks had been asking for help and became a national story when that ask became for body bag. >> a gruesome discovery. police found more than a dozen bodies piled up in an overcrowded morgue. >> that's my uncle. >> reporter: beth's uncle was a resident when he died on april. she says the facility does not know whether his death may have been related to covid-19. >> family members can't even go

and see their loved ones right now. >> reporter: the tragedy was a complete shock. a few days before his death, an a andover staff member called to say he was being taken to the hospital. >> i got a call that his brother larry had been taken to the hospital with a fever. four days later we got a call that my uncle had died. >> reporter: an investigation has been opened into the high number of deaths at multiple facilities, including andover. >> the survey process that's been used for nursing homes throughout the years is just broken. >> reporter: andover says they remain confident that they have been addressing the unprecedented challenges appropriately. and due to privacy concerns they were unable to discuss individual patient details. as for beth, she's mourning her

uncle, her grief fictixated. >> nobody to hold his hand. nobody to pray for him. nobody to tell him it was going to be okay or anything. he died, i'm sure he died gasping for air. and it breaks my heart. nobody should die like this. >> our thanks to kaylee. up next, one on one with seema verma. what she says the trump administration is doing to protect nursing homes from covid-19. it's time to step up. prep up. step up. prep up. to help keep you free from the risk of hiv. from the makers of truvada, there's another prep option:sco. a once-daily prescription medicine that helps lower the chances of getting hiv through sex. it's not for everyone. descovy for prep has not been studied in people assigned female at birth. talk to your doctor to find out if it's right for you. step up. for health and body. prep up for your one and only love or many loves.

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the trump administration says it will now require nursing homes to report new covid-19 cases to the cdc. it's just one change to answer critics of how it has handled the crisis in long-term care facilities. earlier today i spoke with seema verma. she heads the center for medicare and medicaid services and is part of the coronavirus task force. thank you so much for joining us, very grateful for your time. do you think your agency is doing enough, did enough in assisting seniors during the crisis? >> well, first of all, let me just say that our hearts and minds go out to the nursing home patients and their families. this has been an enormously difficult time. and nursing home residents were amongst the most vulnerable to the coronavirus. that's why we took early action, putting out infection control policies, reminding nursing homes of those long-standing guidelines. and we've continued to update that information based on the

latest science and information. >> i'd like to take you back to early march. you received a letter from congress raising concerns that nursing homes were especially at risk from covid-19 outbreaks. the letter from senator ron weiden and richard neil accused the administration of previously weakening safety standards to put nursing homes at greater risk to outbreaks. what's your response to that? >> everything that the trump administration has done has been to increase accountability for nursing homes and to improve quality and safety across the board. >> also in that letter, they cite the administration's september 2019 removal of the requirements that medicare and medicaid facilities document emergency preparedness coordination with state, local and federal officials. why was that removed, and did that leave some facilities more vulnerable to an emergency like this? >> absolutely we' been doing with nursing homes is to hold them accountable for outcomes. and we've also been trying to increase transparency so that

patients and their families have better insight as to what's going on in the nursing home. >> if the administration removed requirements, how does that better prepare the federal government to monitor what's going on in nursing homes? >> well, we've given flexion blgts to nursing homes. we also have to make sure regulations don't stand in the way of nursing homes providing high-quality care to their patients. the last thing we want are nurses and doctors in the back room filling out paperwork. >> one of the things we're hearing from nursing homes is that they in the beginning a ts gloves, gowns. how much of that is the administration responsible for? >> let me just say that fema's done a terrific job in making sure that health care facilities across the country are getting the supplies they need and we've been working with state and local officials. >> if i may interrupt you, we've talked to an um in number of n

homes that they lack the resources they need. >> the response is, as we've said many times, it's locally executed. state managed and federally supported. >> by abc's estimate, at least 10,000 seniors have died in nursing homes in this country from this pandemic. how do you square that number with the notion that the federal government has done all it can, that it's not made mistakes? how do those two things square? >> this is a very unprecedented situation. we've tried to take all the data and the science and the information. we've put out a series of recommendations, requirements. we've gotten burdensome regulations out of the way so nursing homes could gauge a strong response. we've had fema trying to provide the supplies and needed things for nursing homes. and you've seen state and local leaders do extraordinary measures. >> something i'm still working to manage.

when i talk to nurses, doctors, health care professionals, people who are on the ground, i've not had a single conversation where they've not said i wish we would have done better in this regard. i'm struck in my conversation with you and when i hear these briefing from the white house, i've not heard that spirit of, of humility about perhaps we could have done more, perhaps we could have done things sooner. why is that? >> you know, i can only speak for myself and my team. our team has been working night and day. we have taken unprecedented actions to cut regulations. you know, at the end of the day we all have to remember that this virus was only known to mankind less than six months m te. f taking m qutis.> coming up, the sweetest social distancing birthday

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and finally tonight, puppy love during this pandemic. elizabeth guthrie north carolina loves dogs. so they wanted to make sure this special day was extra special. >> all these dogs are here for you, elizabeth. >> dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole. that's our show for this evening. goodnight. ♪ ba, da, ba, da ba, ba, da, ba,ba ♪ ♪ jimmy kimmel live ♪ this is ridiculous. from his house! >> jimmy: hello. i'm jimmy kimmel. i'm the host of this house. the reason i look like a my little pony is that today, in

case you aren't aware, was supposed to be take your kid to work day, which is kind of every day for a lot of us now. we igg toids to the breakfast nook for a zoom meeting with no pants leave ian makeup tonight. are you going to do it? >> eye shadow. >> jimmy: eye shadow, ah-oh. >> yeah. oh, my gosh. ha, ha. you should look at yourself when you're done, okay? >> jimmy: mm-hm. i will. do i look beautiful? >> you look like a girl! >> jimmy: what do you think, guillermo, do i look like a girl? >> guillermo: a little bit, yeah. you look beautiful. >> jimmy: thank you, very much. and thank you, jane. who knew my color palette was jolly rancher. tonight was also round one of the nfl draft. it was sup