Outbreak of Covid-19 in nursing home in Uruguay leaves 15 dead

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Fifteen older people died after an outbreak of Covid-19 in a geriatric care home in the city of Fray Bentos, on Uruguay’s western coast, authorities confirmed Monday.

“It is a tragedy,” Omar Lafluf, mayor of the department of Rio Negro, where Fray Bentos is located, said on television.

The mayor said that the home had 65 residents and more than 40 employees, of whom several have reported being positive for covid, so “the infection may have entered” through some of them.

He reported that the outbreak of 25 cases was reported on March 21, one day before vaccination with Pfizer doses was to begin, which had to be suspended because of the infections.

Of the 15 deaths that have occurred since then, 13 have been confirmed as coronavirus cases, and two others are awaiting the results of clinical tests.

The elderly, who were not transferred to intensive care centers, received all the necessary assistance, said the director of the home, Daura Garaza.

“They have not lacked anything, neither oxygen, nor medication, nor dedication, nor cleanliness, nor food,” said Garaza, who also caught covid and decided to spend the quarantine working in the residence, which is against health protocols, in radio statements.

“I think it is perfect that they investigate me, that Interpol comes anyway (…) Do you think that a person deserves to die alone, intubated?” she alleged.

The Minister of Health, Daniel Salinas, supported Monday the nursing home’s actions by asserting that the elderly received “timely and continuous attention.”

Garaza “is just another patient and has had that thing that doctors sometimes have of immolating themselves and staying in the boat until the end,” said Salinas at a press conference in Fray Bentos, where he arrived this afternoon to get first-hand information on the situation.

However, the departmental Prosecutor’s Office will intervene ex officio to investigate the case, local media reported.

Rio Negro is one of the departments with the highest number of infections per inhabitant in Uruguay, which is now experiencing the pandemic’s worst moment.

Considered for months as an example of good management of the health emergency in the region, the small South American country has 117,757 cases and 1,101 deaths due to coronavirus.

Although vaccination is progressing at a good pace and has already reached 20% of the population inoculated with the first or second dose of CoronaVac or Pfizer vaccines, the escalation of infections threatens to collapse the health system.

Forty-five percent of intensive care beds are occupied by patients with Covid-19, above the 35% considered the limit for entering a “red zone” of saturation of the health system.

Source: La Tercera