Cards, Letters Brighten Nursing Home Residents’ Days While on Coronavirus Lockdown

Nursing homes and retirement facilities across the country are locking down their access to visitors to help stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, leaving residents isolated.

But people across the country are answering the call to keep these residents from feeling lonely by writing cards and letters to let them know how much they are loved.

“If your children’s schools are closed and looking for something to keep them busy please consider having them write letters or color pictures and send the to our residents,” reads a Facebook post from St. Anthony’s Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Rock Island, Illinois.

The trend is catching on among nursing home directors pleading for cards and people who are answering the call to make cards and share their card-making experiences on social media.

One group of siblings made national news this week for sending cards to nursing home residents, according to Good Morning America.

According to a fact sheet from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), older adults and people with underlying medical conditions are at increased risk of catching the coronavirus.

Despite concerns that the virus could live on surfaces such as mail and infect vulnerable populations, CDC experts say that the risk is minimal because of “poor survivability” on products or packaging that is shipped over days or weeks.

“The paper that recently published, these are under ideal sort of experimental situations,” said Joseph Vinetz, a professor of medicine at Yale University and infectious disease researcher who was not affiliated with the study. “If somebody were to, say, cough … on a box or on a letter, the chances of that remaining viable for the period of time it’s in transit seems extremely unlikely.”