Federal prosecutors have launched a separate probe into whether the Holyoke Soldiers Home failed to provide adequate healthcare to veterans during the Covid19 crisis and in general.
US Attorney Andrew Lelling says that his office will “ examine whether the Soldiers' Home violated the rights of residents by failing to provide them adequate medical care generally, and during the coronavirus pandemic."
32 people have died at the home. It is unclear how many of the 32 have died from the virus.
Lelling said. "We will aggressively investigate recent events at the Home and, as needed, require the Commonwealth to adopt reforms to ensure patient safety in the future. My condolences to the families of those veterans who died while in the Home's care; we will get to the bottom of what happened here."
Besides Lelling, the State Attorney General Maura Healey has launched an investigation along with one conducted for the Governor and the state legislature has yet another. There are no timetables for completion of the probes.
Bennett Walsh, the Superintendent of the Soldiers Home issued a statement that says he informed the state on a daily basis of the issues that they were going through. The Governor has suggested that Walsh did not inform anyone of the problems until it was too late.
In the statement this week Walsh wrote:
"There have been widespread reports in the media that state officials were kept in the dark about what was happening at the Soldiers' Home during the Covid-19 crisis. These reports are false," Walsh said in his statement. "We provided updates on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times a day. These updates were by phone, text, email, conference calls and official report forms. These updates were made at various times to the staffs of the Secretary of Veteran Services (DVS), the Executive office of Health and Human Services(EOHH)and the Department of Public Health(DPH)."
The Governor says he has always had the stance that he will let all the investigators, investigate and will not intervene at this point.