The coronavirus has made dramatic transformations of nursing homes across Spain, turning dozens of its 5,500 homes into plague houses and propelling their ill-equipped staff onto the front lines of an accelerating pandemic
MADRID - Death arrived slowly at the nursing home where Chelo Megia works. Then it was everywhere.
“They started isolating everybody and telling us, ‘Protect yourselves.’ We were wearing a mask and gloves and that was it,” she said. “Right now, this isn’t a nursing home, it’s a hospital,” said Megia, 49, exhausted and shaken after seven straight days on the job. “Everything has completely changed.”The coronavirus has wrought dramatic transformations of nursing homes across Spain, turning dozens of its 5,500 homes into plague houses and propelling their ill-equipped staff onto the frontlines of an accelerating pandemic.
These claims were echoed in video testimony from seven care workers provided by their union to Reuters. They said they had received little or no guidance on how to deal with infected residents, and feared carrying the disease home to their own families. Some accused their managers of downplaying or covering up cases of coronavirus.
Separately, prosecutors last Wednesday confirmed opening a preliminary investigation into at least 17 coronavirus deaths at the Monte Hermoso nursing home in Madrid, the center of Spain’s epidemic. Monte Hermoso’s management did not respond to a request for comment. At one home in a village in the south, the Navy have moved in because the entire staff have either been infected or are isolated, local media reported. The Navy confirmed it is helping.
“Nursing homes acted like a canary in the coal mine - the alarm ringing to show the virus is already circulating among us,” said Javier Del Aguila, an epidemiologist working in the public health system in Madrid.
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