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MADRID: As the two morgue workers were pushing a stretcher with a body in a bag out of the room, the old man in the adjoining bed briefly woke up from his dementia. “Is dead?” he muttered, reaching out his arm, trying to touch his roommate one last time.
Reflecting on a scene repeated too many times, one of the workers, Manel Rivera, became desperate at the growing number of elderly people dying as the coronavirus resurfaces.
“The sad thing is,” he said of the man who survived in the Barcelona nursing home, “in a few days we will probably come back for him.”
Morgue workers are again busy 24 hours a day in nursing homes and hospices across Europe, amid outbreaks that this time are wreaking havoc mainly on facilities that were salvaged during the spring.
In the United States, patients in nursing homes and long-term care facilities and those who care for them have accounted for a staggering 39 percent of the 281,000 coronavirus deaths in the country.
The rise in Europe is occurring despite the retaining wall of measures erected since the spring, including facilities adapted only for residents with coronavirus.
It is also launching authorities and elderly care professionals into a race against time before mass vaccinations can begin.
In response, Portugal has deployed military units to train nursing home staff in disinfection.
In France, where at least 5,000 institutionalized elderly people have died in the last month, and in Germany and Italy, where the summer respite has been followed by an upward turn since September, family visits to nursing homes are being restricted again or completely banning.
Separated by a curtain, a person sleeps on a bed as morgue workers prepare the body of an elderly person who died of COVID-19 in a nursing home in Barcelona, Spain, on November 19, 2020 (Photo : AP / Emilio Morenatti).
Most countries are intensifying screening of workers and residents, trying to prevent the spread by asymptomatic carriers of the virus. The strategy has helped Belgium reduce nursing home deaths from 63 percent of all COVID-19 deaths before mid-June to 39 percent by the end of November.
But in Spain, where the pandemic has ignited a polarized debate about the country’s ability to care for Europe’s fastest-aging society, coronavirus deaths in nursing homes have been on the rise for two months.
They now account for about half of all new daily deaths, a similar proportion to that of March and April. New daily infections are also disproportionate in homes: 13 cases indoors for every one outdoors.
However, there is reason for hope, as Britain became the first country in the world to authorize a rigorously tested COVID-19 vaccine last week, and it could start dispensing it within days, prioritizing household residents. elderly and those who care for them, followed by other elderly and healthcare workers.
READ: Britain gears up for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine launch this week
Nursing homes are also at the top or near the list for vaccines in the US, Spain, and many other European countries.
“It is a sensible, justified and logical measure” to prioritize nursing homes, said Miguel Vázquez, director of the Madrid association of relatives of neighbors Pladigmare. After an “embarrassing” death toll and a history of repeated mistakes, he said, “failure to do so would be a deliberate death sentence.”
Residents sit in a living room and watch television at the Icaria nursing home in Barcelona, Spain, on November 27, 2020 (Photo: AP / Emilio Morenatti)
Some things have improved since the spring. Caregivers have learned to make the most of protective equipment and tests, which are no longer in such short supply.
There is a better understanding of what is happening within most facilities, and experts have learned how COVID-19 affects the elderly, with symptoms such as diarrhea and rashes that had been overlooked.
“It really is a chameleonic disease that fools us all,” said Dr. José Augusto García Navarro, director of the Spanish Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology.
One of the most serious mistakes in the early days was locking the elderly in harmful isolation, Garcia Navarro said, leading to loss of mobility, insomnia, malnutrition, depression and other ailments that affected and even killed many.
“It is essential to guarantee physiological, occupational and psychological therapies for those infected,” he said. “That did not happen during the first wave and it is not happening as it should during the second.”
Residents participate in a gym session at the Icaria nursing home in Barcelona, Spain, on November 11, 2020 (Photo: AP / Emilio Morenatti)
An initiative in Spain is trying to remedy that with facilities for the recovery of patients with viruses that, although they are still contagious, have nowhere to isolate themselves or stay active. They come from their own homes or from the many small care centers that have no way of separating residents.
At the Vitalia Canillejas Home in Madrid, Belkis Zoraida Cuevas, 83, is recovering from the virus, which has kept her away from her husband, Joaquín González, 92, for the longest period in more than six decades of marriage.
“Oh my God! What an anxiety crisis. How I have cried,” Cuevas said. “I’m better now, but this has been too much to handle. It’s like going to war without weapons.”
While walking with the help of a therapist to regain mobility lost during a month of hospitalization, Pedro Marcelo, 87, said: “I am not afraid of dying, I just want to move a little better until the day.” so that I go it arrives “.
A study of blood samples in all nursing homes in Madrid showed that 53 percent of the 55,000 residents live in facilities where more than half of the residents have developed antibodies.
“It is sad to say so,” said Paz Membibre, who manages a dozen centers of the Vitalia Home group in or around the Spanish capital, “but the damage we suffer has now protected us.” However, how long immunity might last is a question scientists are still trying to answer.
READ: COVID-19 reinfection casts doubt on virus immunity – Study
READ: UK study finds evidence of decreased immunity of antibodies to COVID-19 over time
Through a window, Angels Trepat, 59, says goodbye to his mother Angelina, 91, after visiting her at the Icaria nursing home in Barcelona, Spain, on November 27, 2020 (Photo: AP / Emilio Morenatti).
Meanwhile, across the continent, infections often skyrocket to dozens or more than 100 in just 48 hours.
In Spain, the largest waves of cases and deaths are now in the southern regions of Andalusia and central Castilla y León, which dodged the worst during the spring. In neighboring France, infections are now more widespread than in the spring, when they were concentrated in hot spots.
In Berlin, where 14 people recently died of coronavirus in a 90-resident nursing home, city officials said no strict rules were being enforced.
García Navarro said that most of the affected facilities in Spain are trying to control the virus with a shortage of staff as health workers fall ill. In a few cases, he said, “security protocols are not yet followed.”
In a scathing report on how thousands were abandoned in nursing homes, many without medical treatment, in Madrid and Barcelona in the spring, Amnesty International said this week that some of the same problems still exist, including health protocols recommending prioritizing the elderly. young over old.
Bureaucracy and mismanagement have also played a role. An internal Spanish government analysis seen by the Associated Press lists 30 top mistakes that led to the deaths of more than 20,000 elderly COVID-19 patients before mid-May. But its recommendations are still being reviewed with regional officials, and some have not been implemented.
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