- Mrs. Bonnie, I have to COVID test you.

- COVID really did show us where the pieces of our system that are fractured within long-term care.

You have the overstressed, over the stretched thin nursing assistant and nurse, and now providing care for older adults who have COVID.

And there are various studies that show how COVID entered these facilities.

And it's typically through a worker, a caregiver that is there in the facility, and it's really hard to contain COVID in these long-term care facilities.

- [Instructor] By May of 2020, 42% of all COVID deaths had taken place among 0.6% of the population.

That tiny fraction being those who lived in nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

Today, vaccines have gone a long way toward protecting both residents and workers, but the shortage of paid caregivers is only growing worse.

Thanks in no small part to the pandemic.

- We do see a lot of turnover in long-term care of nurses and nursing assistants.

The last statistic that I saw said that nursing assistants have a 70% annual turnover rate.

We know that nursing assistants provide almost all of the care in long-term care facilities.

It's a physically demanding job.

It's emotionally demanding as well.

They're taking care of residents, and they're also really there for families.

We also know that they are the lowest paid professional there in a long-term care facility.

- People that might think about working in long-term care can make more money going to work for Amazon or Starbucks or Target.

- [Instructor] We cannot meet the need and provide long-term care without the workers providing that care.

And this very much is a women's issue because the majority of those direct care workers are women and they're often persons of color.

So we have to recognize that this is also about pay equality and valuing women and valuing people of color who are in the workforce.