Genesis Healthcare Inc., a major national nursing home operator that has long struggled financially, announced Wednesday that it will delist its shares from the New York Stock Exchange and receive an investment that could give a New York private-equity firm control of the Kennett Square company. ReGen Healthcare LLC, a new private-equity-backed firm, has agreed to invest $50 million in Genesis, with the possibility of investing $25 million more by April 15. If both deals are completed, ReGen would control 43% of Genesis’s shares.

The pandemic is reshaping the way Americans care for their elderly, prompting family decisions to avoid nursing homes and keep loved ones in their own homes for rehabilitation and other care. Americans have long relied on institutions to care for the frailest seniors. The U.S. has the largest number of nursing-home residents in the world. But families and some doctors have been reluctant to send patients to such facilities, fearing infection and isolation in places ravaged by Covid-19, which has caused more than 115,000 deaths linked to U.S. long-term-care institutions. Occupancy in U.S. nursing homes is down by 15%, or more than 195,000 residents, since the end of 2019, driven both by deaths and by the fall in admissions, a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal data shows.