Aged Care
Elderly pay heaviest price
Around the world, COVID-19 has taken a disproportionate toll of aged care residents.
“We failed to protect our elderly. That’s really serious, and a failure for society as a whole,” Sweden’s health minister, Lena Hallengren, has admitted.
About 90 per cent of the 3,700 people who had died from coronavirus in Sweden were over 70, and half were living in nursing homes, according to a study from Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare at the end of April.
More than half of Belgium’s coronavirus victims have died in nursing homes.
Workers say the sector was initially overlooked, and they suffered from shortages of masks and skyrocketing prices for hand sanitiser.
Italy’s higher health institute found that between 1 February and 17 April there had been 6773 deaths across all nursing homes, 40 per cent of which were due to COVID-19.
Residents of nursing homes have accounted for a huge proportion of COVID-19 deaths in the United States.
Such deaths now account for more than half of all fatalities in 14 states, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
But only 33 states report nursing home-related deaths, so the true extent of the problem remains unknown, The Guardian newspaper reported.