- At one point in the pandemic, the rate of nursing home deaths in Colorado was the worst in the nation. This was over several weeks last fall during the third wave of COVID-19. How the state got to that point is the subject of a CPR News investigation. Reporter Ben Markus lifts the curtain on why he began looking into this and what he found.
- Seniors in nursing homes were the most vulnerable to COVID-19 until vaccines arrived in December 2020. One important way to protect vulnerable seniors is accurate and timely testing. But in Colorado, virtually every testing strategy the state tried for nursing homes failed to keep the virus out of homes, including a $90 million contract with an inexperienced California start-up.
- As the COVID-19 virus got out of control in Colorado nursing homes late in 2020, help the state had promised for just that kind of scenario didn't materialize. It left local public health leaders and nursing home operators wondering, "Why aren't they on the ground yet?" CPR News investigative reporter Ben Markus reports on the strike force that was not really a strike force.