Date Published: 02/09/2020
ARCHIVED - 35 cases of covid; outbreak in Murcia care home
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
The private residence of the Hermanitas de los Pobres is in the pedanía of Puente Tocinos in the Murcia city municipality
Although the majority of new cases of covid being reported in the Murcia region are in younger people at the moment, the news that covid cases have been detected in a residencia is always followed by a pang of anxiety, as those most likely to suffer severe cases or die from covid are the most vulnerable, the elderly, and most frail, typically the profile of a resident in this type of care home.
In this case, the residencia is privately run, and has 27 residents, cared for by four professional staff and four nuns.
Even though this is a private centre, the Murcian Health Service is intervening to ensure that established protocols are followed to ensure the safety of the residents.
Yesterday PCR tests were carried out on all the residents and workers of the center, and measures taken to ensure the separation of the residents and workers. In addition, a logistics team has also been deployed to support the disinfection and cleaning of the facilities and the families notified.
The workers affected are quarantining.
Care homes and day centres are amongst the most vulnerable facilities in the region, and one of the key policies of the regional health service to reduce contagions has been to restrict visits to care homes and close day centres for the elderly in municipalities considered to be the highest risk.
Nine municipalities, including Murcia, are included in these restrictions.
PCR tests on new incorporations and workers returning from holidays
It’s known that the primary cause of infections in care homes is the workforce, and in many cases a large number of residents are infected simply because a worker will go from room to room having close contact with the residents through their work.
So for this reason, ensuring that staff are not contagious is viewed as a critical barrier to preventing contagion from entering the residencias.
For this reason, workers must be PCR tested periodically on a rolling basis and also following leave, holidays etc, the implementation of this managed by the Sansonet system which manages requests for health service personnel to undertake the necessary tests and provides all the necessary tools to enable the management of the carehome to comply with the legislation.
The reports relating to the current situation regarding staff and PCR tests has been requested for evaluation.
In the meantime, hospitals have been advised that some of the patients who have tested positive may require hospital treatment should their condition worsen.
There are similar situations to this all over the country, with new outbreaks in dozens of care homes.