‘You feel like you’ve lost a year of your life’: Vaccinated couple still can’t see each other

CHARLOTTE — David McIver said he and his wife are fully vaccinated, but he still cannot see her because she is living in a nursing home.

“In March, when our long-term care facility locked down, she knew me,” McIver told Channel 9. “But I’ve only seen her at a distance several times, and the last time, I don’t believe she knew me.”

Indoor visits at nursing homes in North Carolina are allowed only if there have not been any positive COVID-19 cases in the facility for 14 days.

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Many restrictions in the state were eased last week, but nothing about nursing homes was specifically addressed.

“I was extremely disappointed that he (Gov. Roy Cooper) didn’t say a word about long-term care facilities, nursing homes,” McIver said. “The whole focus was restaurants and bars.”

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Public health experts, including those from the CDC, said rolling back restrictions may be too much and too soon.

“I understand the temptation to do this,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC. She said, “70,000 cases a day seems good compared to where we were just a few months ago, but we cannot be resigned to 70,000 cases a day, 2,000 daily deaths. Please hear me clearly: At this level of cases with a variant spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained.”

McIver said the virus has cheated him out of time.

“You feel like you’ve lost a year of your life and their life, quite frankly,” he said.

Petition in Anson County demands visitation restrictions lifted at nursing homes

Cox Media Group