New European nursing home data shows hidden extent of coronavirus crisis
In many cases data from care homes is not being included in death tallies, with one newspaper in the UK reporting that the country’s real death toll may be twice as high as the official tally.
Josefa Ribas, 86, who is bedridden, looks at nurse Alba Rodriguez as Ribas’ husband, Jose Marcos, 89, stands by in their home in Barcelona, Spain, March 30, 2020, during the coronavirus outbreak. Ribas suffers from dementia, and Marcos fears for them both if the virus enters their home. "If I get the virus, who will take care of my wife?" (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
The full extent of the coronavirus crisis in the western world is only now coming to light as data about cases linked to care homes is made available.
According to a report by the London School of Economics (LSE), deaths associated with the covid-19 virus in care homes may even make up the majority of fatalities in some countries.
In Belgium of the 4,857 deaths linked to the coronavirus reported as of April 16, 2,387 happened in care homes, according to the LSE study. That amounts to just over 49 percent.
Around 64 percent of Norway’s 223 covid-19 related deaths were also associated with care homes.
Similarly, a majority of Spain’s coronavirus deaths are believed to have taken place among staff and elderly residents in care homes. Of 19,516 deaths as of April 16, 10,924 were care home residents. That figure amounts to just over 52 percent.
In one particularly gruesome incident in Spain, in March soldiers came across the corpses of coronavirus victims in one home after they had been abandoned.
The picture across Europe is similarly grim, a recent TRT World report on the situation in Italy quoted a World Health Organization official who described the crisis of deaths among the elderly as a ‘massacre’.
While for younger demographics the death rate for covid-19 infection lies between 0.2 and three percent, for those over 80 there is a one in five chance of dying according to preliminary data.
As the LSE data is partial, there could be even higher rates of death among the elderly in care homes.
Mortality associated with Covid-19 outbreaks in care homes as a percentage of total deaths in a country.
Incomplete death tolls
It is feared that due to discrepancies in the way covid-19 victims are recorded, in some countries the true extent of the crisis in care homes might not be properly recorded.
One of the factors confusing records of death are whether a person died of symptoms resembling covid-19 infection but was never tested. Excess death records therefore provide one clue in determining the impact of covid-19.
In the UK, the official death tally as of April 22 lies at over 17,000 but a report by the Financial Times, which studies government statistics on excess deaths found that there could have been more that 41,000 deaths due to the coronavirus.
The British Office for National Statistics had recorded a big jump in deaths in care homes during the pandemic when compared to the data from previous years, the article said.
If confirmed, the data would put the UK second only to the US in the number of deaths caused by the virus.
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