a massive independent review of the state's covid-19 response finds New Jersey's lack of preparedness led to unnecessary deaths and suffering the long awaited review out this week fulfills Governor Murphy's promise to provide a postmortem on the most dangerous pandemic in a century which sickened nearly 3 million people Statewide and killed more than 33,000 the roughly 1,000 page report gives credit to the pandemic's heroes but CR criticizes the state government for a patchwork response that hit the most vulnerable in New Jersey the hardest and a senior correspondent Renda Flanigan reports reveals that even in the year since the state still hasn't come up with a future emergency plan leadership leadership would have made a difference Jay boxwell spent anxious hours at Jersey Veterans homes demanding action as CO's first surge cut like a side through the state run facilities in Meno Park in paramis killing almost 200 residents in April Alone by September grieving families and angry staff knew something was very wrong horrible horrible they want us to work without Mas because it's going to scare the resident and when we see they're just dropping like flies that that's breaking our heart State officials witnessed that tragedy unfolding at the Vets homes and at long-term care facilities where more than 60 16,000 died most of them elderly and vulnerable the governor promised a full accounting which arrived this week in a massive report that documents New Jersey's response to the pandemic at the two vets homes it found systemic failures poor infection control lack of employee confidence in leadership and management incompetence Meno Park and pamis at the beginning had soldiers running those facilities okay they did not have clinical health care background whatsoever but if we would have had some skilled leaders in those positions I think we could have minimized the impact that there could have been for some fragile individuals that passed away unnecessarily I feel the report blames the federal government for failing to provide critical guidance and says covid caught New Jersey's Health Care system off guard and woefully unprepared it notes that by February the virus was already out spreading like wildfire through the community infect ing long-term care centers there is like an admission of things that went right and that things that went wrong so we should have been reacting in real time to those situations and we weren't and so how does the report tell us about how to do that effectively in the future I don't think the report tells us that at all it does describe how patients overwhelmed hospitals already struggling to find protective gear so Health officials hoarded masks for medical centers and in the early months nursing homes went without David Adano was an assistant Health commissioner during the pandemic nobody had enough PPE I think that's one of the really important things that's stressed in the report which is that preparation uh and proper uh stockpiling is going to be important not just for New Jersey but also for all other states and in particular the federal government the report commends the governor's quick response locking down the state and closing schools but it adds letting individual districts decide when to reopen classrooms contributed to learning loss because urban districts couldn't provide the required social distancing overall Co hit low income minority communities much harder underscoring pre-existing inequities the report says and I think it talked about um employment status for example and how certain occupations were more likely to um be exposed and um have less access to healthare well those were almost at least early on U Lar l ly occupied by communities of color and lwi income population the njaa responded to the report noting we believe that inperson instruction is the gold standard for Effective teaching and learning but that had to be balanced against the very real health risks of in-person instruction early in the pandemic particularly before vaccines were universally available the report also says State officials failed to activate an existing flu pandemic plan leaving local Health departments scram rambling even after coping with covid for 4 years the report concludes New Jersey's not ready for the next pandemic you have to build the and none of these reports really talk about how you build up a public health Workforce that then is going to be equipped to work with people because people are making the decisions that make these pandemics spread Public Health experts hope the next Administration learns from the deadly mistakes made by this one I'm Brenda Flanagan Brenda Flanagan NJ Spotlight News