COVID-19 will push nursing home design forward The second-floor courtyard at the Southington Care Center. Myles Brown Over 40 percent of American deaths attributed to COVID-19 have been nursing home residents. Outdated nursing home designs contributed to the scale of this tragedy in Connecticut. Many design changes that could have prevented the spread of COVID-19 were already needed to improve the well-being of nursing home residents. The pandemic has made these issues impossible to ignore. A generation of seniors will now benefit from resident-centric changes in design thinking that would have been much slower coming without the devastation of COVID-19. Sunlight and nature – must-haves