Media Release: SENIOR PATIENTS AND WORKERS REMAIN AT GREAT RISK DESPITE GOVERNOR’S SHAM MATILDA’S LAW
For immediate release: April 16, 2020
New York – On March 20, Governor Cuomo signed Matilda’s Law to protect those over 70 years old and others most vulnerable to the Coronavirus. However, home care workers are reporting that this law is flouted and not enforced, thus endangering the health of both home care workers and the elderly and infirm patients in their care.
The law mandates that all visitors be screened by having their temperature taken and wearing masks. Now, three weeks after the law’s enactment, home care workers and their patients are still subjected to risky situations as family members may come and go without taking the legally required precautions. Matilda’s Law was supposed to address this public-health concern, but a lack of enforcement and accountability renders this law meaningless.
Workers have attempted to reach out to city and state agencies to see what help they can get in enforcing the law to better protect their own health and that of their patient. They were directed to the State Department of Health, which provided no answers, or back to their agencies.
Social distancing or quarantine is impossible for elderly or physically disabled people who require around-the-clock care. Their health conditions leave them critically vulnerable to the Coronavirus, while also exposing their homecare workers to extreme risks. Many home care workers are elderly themselves. They have their own health risks as State Law requires many to work 24-hour shifts for multiple days in a row, causing sleep deprivation that can result in high blood pressure, arthritis, and other mental and physical health complications.
Now that more patient family members are getting sick with coronavius symptoms, homecare workers are still being denied access to tests. Like any healthcare worker, homecare workers fear exposure and fear bringing the virus home to their families and should have access to tests. Governor Cuomo has also failed to provide adequate testing for all health care workers so they can do their critically important work with piece of mind.
Linda Huang, a homecare worker, said, “We never heard the government mention home attendants. Many of us are scared. Some don’t dare go to work. My co-worker, who cares for the patient on my days off, hasn’t come to work, therefore I have to work seven days a week. My family has been telling me not to go. But if I don’t go and neither do other home attendants, what will happen to the senior patients?”
Recent federal relief packages exempted home care agencies as health care providers yet they are not treating as such. Home care workers cannot apply for unemployment and their agencies can exclude workers from receiving paid sick leave or family leave. Homecare workers should not have to choose between their patients’ day-to-day needs and their own health. No level of government has addressed this growing crisis for workers and seniors, and these at-risk populations have nowhere to go for their fears to be addressed.
Homecare workers demand help from Governor Cuomo to enforce Matilda’s law so that they can better protect their own health and that of their patients, to be provided protective equipment, access to testing and medical care if needed. Their demand is part of an ongoing petition that calls for protective equipment for healthcare workers and disaster relief funds for all workers, regardless of immigration status. The petition has surpassed 8,000 signatures.