Four in 10 residents was the average number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in those for-profit long-term-care facilities. One possible factor: The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration had already cited 80% of Mississippi’s nursing homes for infection-control problems before the pandemic hit.
Jayme Fraser
Jayme Fraser is an investigative data journalist for USA TODAY based in the Rocky Mountain West but reporting on the nation. She focuses primarily on inequities and the solutions to them, empowering readers with analysis to back up experiences that might otherwise be dismissed as anecdotal. She quantifies the damage caused by discriminatory policies, flawed data collection and biased gatekeeping of knowledge. She has covered campaigns, nonprofits, land use, substance use policy, health care, education, tax policy, criminal justice, religion and governments, ranging from local and state to tribal and federal. Her work has spurred changes to state laws, amendments to federal policies, updates to hospital practices, and helped to free a man wrongfully convicted of murdering his infant son. Before joining USA TODAY, she had worked for newspapers in Wyoming, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Texas.