Other states in their sights include Florida, Pennsylvania and Missouri.

Watchdogs, patient advocates and lawyers argue that immunity orders are misguided. At a time when the crisis is laying bare such chronic industry problems as staffing shortages and poor infection control, they say legal liability is the last safety net to keep facilities accountable.

Loading

They also contend nursing homes are taking advantage of the crisis to protect their bottom lines.

Almost 70 per cent of the nation's more than 15,000 nursing homes are run by for-profit companies, and hundreds have been bought and sold in recent years by private-equity firms.

"What you're really looking at is an industry that always wanted immunity and now has the opportunity to ask for it under the cloak of saying, 'Let's protect our heroes,"' said Mike Dark, an attorney for California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform.

Loading

Nowhere have the industry's efforts played out more starkly than in New York, which has a fifth of the nation's known nursing home and long-term care deaths.

New York's immunity law signed by Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo was drafted by the Greater New York Hospital Association, an influential lobbying group for both hospitals and nursing homes that donated more than $US1 million to the state Democratic Party in 2018 and has pumped more than $US7 million into lobbying over the past three years.

While the law covering both hospital and nursing care workers doesn't cover intentional misconduct, gross negligence and other such acts, it makes clear those exceptions don't include "decisions resulting from a resource or staffing shortage."

Cuomo's administration said the measure was a necessary part of getting the state's entire health care apparatus to work together to respond to the crisis and save lives.

Nationally, the lobbying effort is being led by the American Health Care Association, which represents nearly all of the nation's nursing homes and has spent $US23 million on lobbying efforts in the past six years.

Other states that have emergency immunity measures are Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts; Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, Nevada, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.

Their provisions vary but largely apply to injuries, deaths and care decisions, sometimes even to property damage. But there are limitations: Most make exceptions for gross negligence and willful misconduct.

Toby Edelman of the Centre for Medicare Advocacy said immunity declarations could make even gross or willful negligence suits harder since homes could argue any deficiencies were somehow tied to the pandemic.

"Everything can't be blamed on COVID-19. Other things can happen that are terrible," she said. "Just to say we're in this pandemic so anything goes, that seems too far."

AP