“We failed to protect our elderly. That’s really serious, and a failure for society as a whole,” health minister Lena Hallengren told Swedish Television.
“Belgian society has decided that the lives of these confined elderly counted much less than those of the so-called ‘actives’,” social scientist Geoffrey Pleyers wrote in Le Soir last month.
Spain was shocked at the end of March when the defence minister revealed that soldiers drafted in to disinfect residential homes had found some elderly people abandoned and dead in their beds.
In Italy, the prime focus was on a care home in Milan, which had more than 1,000 residents and where there was an unusual increase in deaths in March. An investigation began, and care home officials found that 300 residents had died between January and April.
Of the 900 residents still in the home, 34% were positive for Covid-19. Italy’s higher health institute found that between 1 February and 17 April there had been 6,773 deaths across all care homes, 40% of which were due to Covid-19
Residents of nursing homes have accounted for a staggering proportion of Covid-19 deaths in the US, where more than 85,000 people have died.
Privately compiled data shows that such deaths now account for more than half of all fatalities in 14 states, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
@threadreaderapp unroll
