Five years after the first documented COVID-19 case in Germany, Eugen Brysch, chairman of the Patient Protection Foundation, criticizes the handling of people in care homes during the pandemic.
“Pflegeheime were the Corona hotspots and not the breeding grounds of the virus”Brysch told the Funke Media Group newspapers. Yet the political focus has always been on the situation in hospitals. The part of society, “whose life and body were most threatened by the virus”has been forgotten.
He recalls that nearly every second COVID-19 death in Germany was a resident of a care home. “Life and death took place there in isolation and loneliness.”Relatives and visitors were denied personal contact with their loved ones for a long time, Brysch explained. “In the approximately 16,000 care facilities, the basic protection, a convincing testing regime, additional external support staff and alternative quarters in the event of an infection outbreak, were missing.”
Even the then-decided care-home-based vaccination mandate has “only harmed”. “The pandemic of the unvaccinated did not exist”the patient advocate said. He demands a “thorough investigation of the shortcomings in stationary elderly care”– this is “long overdue”to draw lessons for future pandemics. “It is time for legislative provisions, to exchange medically-caregiving personnel in pandemic situations between hospitals, care homes and ambulatory services”Brysch told the Funke newspapers.