So I don't understand why people at elderly home would be infecting each other unless they're near each other for extended periods for meals or maybe some events.
Either that or maybe some infected workers went from each elderly resident to another, like maybe helping them bathe? Or serve them food?
I've had some experience with 4 different nursing homes. My grandmothers were residents of different nursing homes. A great-aunt was a resident of a different one. DS is a dietary aide in yet a different nursing home.
Many residents don't have private rooms. There can be 2 residents per room, with not even 6 feet of space between the beds, both sharing a bathroom. Even worse, are 2 such rooms with a communal bathroom between them, where 4 residents have to share the same bathroom. (Just remember to lock/unlock the door to the resident room on the other side before/after you go.) The doorknob to the bathroom was visibly dirty every time I visited, which was every day for awhile at one nursing home. (I don't want to get any more graphic about it than that.)
After one grandmother became a resident at a nursing home, literally within days, a norovirus made itself known to me. During one visit, I heard someone down the hall getting sick. Later, I learned it had been a nurse's aide. A couple of days later, my grandmother got similarly sick. Oh, and the staff explained it away as the food must not have agreed with my grandmother. Right...A couple of days later, I got sick at home. That's how fast a highly contagious illness can spread in a confined environment like a nursing home.
How do diseases/illnesses get in? Simple. The staff has to go to work there every day to care for the residents. Anything they're exposed to in the course of their daily lives, the residents will be exposed to. The general public is allowed to come in during visiting hours, 7 days a week. People commonly bring kids to visit on the weekends. Unless the resident has a private room, they're also being exposed to the visitors their roommate gets. Although residents and their visitors are free to leave the rooms and have a more private visit in a common area, the entire visit may take place in the resident's room.
For non-bedridden residents, taking meals in the large dining rooms is encouraged, as well as attending the various activities that are held daily, weekly, and monthly. Relatives of residents are also encouraged to come and attend these events and even to have lunch or dinner with their loved ones in the large dining rooms during just a regular meal time. Visiting residents is so highly encouraged under normal circumstances, they'll even feed the visitors for free.
Residents may have to go to the hospital. If/when they return to the nursing home, they could bring back whatever they were exposed to in the hospital. This isn't uncommon. My one grandmother had to be sent to the hospital 3 times from the nursing home in just a little over a year.
At the facility where DS works, they hold regular community events, each and every month. There are 7 events open to the public that are being held from March 10th through March 30th alone. Sometimes they hold extra large events for large groups like veterans. They hold special events for the residents and their families, like holiday dinners. They hold special shopping events for the nursing staff in the lobby, where a supply company will set up uniforms and shoes and the staff can browse and buy (supposedly at a discount, but you couldn't prove that by me).
The assisted living/independent living facility down the street from us is our assigned voting center. Every election day there are hundreds of people going in to vote, walking down a long hallway past resident rooms to get to the voting machines. During presidential elections, a long line stretches down the hallway. Close to Christmas, that facility has school students come in to sing Christmas carols for the residents. I know, because DD was part of a high school choir group that did this one year.
And that's just what I know about, personally. Think of it. Someone has to deliver the food to the kitchens and other supplies. There are more ways that germs can get into these places than you can imagine.
