‘My life would be at risk if I stayed’: 89-year-old man flees care home after string of coronavirus deaths

Country in deep state of shock after news that army found elderly residents dead and abandoned in care homes, Graham Keeley reports from Madrid

Workers prepare to clean the nursing home where a woman died and several residents and care providers have been diagnosed with coronavirus in Grado, Asturias (Reuters)

Rafael Garcia, an 89-year-old retired government official, noticed one of his carers at the Residencia Orfea care home in Madrid had been crying.

“Has someone died?” he asked her. She told him she had seen six of the home’s residents die in one day from coronavirus.

Garcia decided he did not want to suffer the same fate. He left the old people’s home, which he had moved into after his wife passed away, and went to live with his daughter on 20 March. Since then, 11 people have died at the residence.

“One of the employees told me that my life would be at risk if I stayed here,” he told The Independent.

He has since gone into self-isolation for the sake of his family.

“Even though I am nearly 90 and my legs are slow and I am not very well, my mind is in a perfect condition. I don’t want to end my days in the same way that many others are doing now, in solitude and suffering,” he said in a message emailed to his daughter.

Spain has been in a state of shock after a cabinet minister claimed some residents who caught coronavirus were left to die in old people’s homes.

Margarita Robles, the defence minister, told a Spanish television channel that soldiers sent to fumigate residential homes had found elderly people “completely left to fend for themselves, or even dead, in their beds”.

Spain’s state prosecutor has opened an investigation to ascertain if there is any suggestion of criminal negligence.

The minister’s remarks has, however, prompted an angry rebuke from health care workers.

Jose Manuel Ramirez, president of the Association of the Social Services Directors and Managers, said: “Workers are putting themselves on the line, without resources, without healthcare support or protective gear.”

Government guidelines mean that staff in residential homes who suspect that a person has died from coronavirus should wait for a doctor to arrive to confirm the cause of death.

Staff should not touch the body to avoid contagion and should wait for funeral services to take the corpse away.

However, Spain’s funeral directors say they are under such pressure they may not arrive for hours – or days.

They have not told us anything about what was going on. We don’t know who is looking after them or what kind of place they will be in

Miguel Angel, nephew of resident in care home

Ignacio Fernandez-Cid, president of the Federation of Residential Homes, said: “At first I was shocked by what the minister said. But then I thought about it and I thought the protocol in these homes is to leave the bodies in case of infection so that is what may have happened.”

Soldiers from the Military Emergency Unit have been sent to fumigate airports, ports and residential centres across the country.

The defence ministry has refused to disclose how many bodies have been found at old people’s homes.

Jose Manuel Martin-Lopi, a receptionist at the Madrid home, said that one man died early on Saturday afternoon and the soldiers discovered his body when they entered the building on Sunday morning.

“A person died in our arms because we couldn’t get hold of oxygen. We need oxygen, ambulances and hospitals,” said Rafael Aguilera, mayor of Alcala del Valle, a small town in southern Spain.

Conditions there are desperate: three people lost their lives from coronavirus at the Dolores Ibarruri La Pasionaria home at the weekend and 38 of the 42 residents tested positive for the illness.

Aguilera said after the illness was discovered at the home last Friday and 20 members of staff went into quarantine, he spent four days desperately negotiating with the regional government for somewhere for the residents to move to. Hospitals rejected them as they were too full.

“This virus kills, but what also kills is the system,” he said during an emotive press conference which went viral when it was posted on social media.

Relatives of the elderly residents complained that while the authorities were trying to find a new home for the pensioners, they were kept in the dark about what was happening.

“They have not told us anything about what was going on. We don’t know who is looking after them or what kind of place they will be in,” Miguel Angel, a nephew of Dolores Bonilla, a 99-year-old resident, told The Independent.

However, a spokesman for the Andalusian regional government said it had contacted relatives to explain where their loved ones would be living.

Prosecutors in Catalonia, the wealthy northeastern region, have opened two investigations after 13 residents died from the virus at a home in Capellades and nine more lost their lives at another establishment in Olesa de Montserrat.

Once again, the local council in Olesa said the deaths were due to lack of staff.

It is a scene which is being played out at rest homes across Spain, where the virus has claimed the lives of dozens of pensioners with savage speed.

Spain claimed the unenviable distinction on Wednesday of having the second highest death toll in the world, after Italy. Health authorities said almost 70 per cent of those who lost their lives were aged over 80.

In Spain, the illness has claimed 3,434 lives, compared with 3,258 in China. In total, 40,058 have tested positive for the illness.

The loss of so many of pensioners to coronavirus has shocked Spain to its core, in a country which affords its elderly special respect.