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HEALTH OFFICIALS ARE looking at ways they could safely allow nursing home residents and their families to reunite in the coming weeks, the Chief Medical Officer has said.
Representatives from the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) today told the Oireachtas Special Committee on Covid-19 that the majority of concerns raised with the authority by nursing home residents over the last two months were about their feelings of isolation and loneliness since the blanket ban on visitors to these care facilities.
Hiqa wrote to the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) two weeks ago seeking public health guidance on how to reopen nursing homes to visitors in a safe manner.
This evening CMO Dr Tony Holohan said officials are “very sensitive to the issue”.
“It’s one of the reasons why, if I go back to the beginning, we were reluctant to see a blanket restriction on visiting into facilities, particularly nursing home facilities, which is essentially cutting people off from their loved ones who live in these facilities,” he said.
Holohan said officials are trying to be “creative” about how visiting in some form may be able to begin again as we move through the phases of easing restrictions.
He said the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) is looking at the issue on an ongoing basis to see whether this could be eased during Phase 3, from the end of June.
“We need to look at it not just on its own, or in isolation. We also have recommendations in place around visitation, not to people who are living in nursing homes, but to people who are cocooned at home and who are in the same vulnerable groups being visited by members of their own family,” he said.
Holohan said they are aware of the “significant mental health and frailty challenges” associated with an extended period of isolation and being cut off from loved ones.
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I’m visiting my grandmother this weekend. Her nursing home have made a room with a screen across it. I’ll be on one side and my gran on the other, and we will have an intercom to talk. I get 45 minutes, then they disinfect before the next visitor. My grandmother has advanced Parkinson’s disease and most days wouldn’t even know we are there, but I hope she will know this weekend.
@The Shape: That’s so lovely to hear
How creative do you have to be? 2 metres is two metres. Face masks are face masks. Sanitiser is sanitiser. There’s no voodoo involved..Surely these issues can be sorted out on a case by case basis with trained health professionals around.
@Louis Jacob: You may wonder. We are talking about nursing homes. The rooms are not necessarily build for space and shared facilities would be fast overcrowded.
Further you have also different illnesses like dementia which make it hard to adept new rules or some people would need assistance to walk and employees would need to be occupied if the visitor isn’t allowed to come close..
@8-Bit-Relic: All the more reason to do it case by case. My father was in one of these places and I can totally see how all of these things could be managed if the right nurses were given responsibility.
@8-Bit-Relic: The biggest thing we have to overcome now is inflexibility. People need to be allowed to think on their feet or we’ll be bogged down for months. The elderly dont have months to be waiting
@Louis Jacob: i dont understand the reluctance to enforce face masks. surely reduces need for 2 metres spacing if both parties wearing one? excemptions to the rule can of course be allowed for those who cant.
I lost my mother in early Jan to lung cancer. She was in full time care in a nursing home. We knew it was coming so not much of a shock. But I’m very relieved that she passed before all this mess that’s going on right now. She’d likely have contracted the virus there and we’d have had to go through god knows what to get to see her or bury her. So my heart goes out to all those who’s family are in care at the moment. Those in charge have an obligation to sort out this (nursing homes) mess as quickly and efficiently as possible. Be they creative solutions or not, they need to get it sorted.
@Henry Clarke: Absolutely.
@Henry Clarke: Sorry for your loss, you are totally correct in what you say. Loneliness will cause their end if this is not sorted
Will one of the journalists that go to the briefing grow a pair and actually press Tony for information on the active cases currently in the country. Going by worldometer (I don’t know how reliable it is ) we currently have 2,060 active cases…population is 4.9million, if that figure is accurate 0.042% of the population actually have it right now. Co. Clare for example, a population of 118k , the total amount of cases in Clare throughout the entire crises so far is 322 people. 0.27% of the population yet the county is in lockdown.
@Paudie Ireland: The country is in lockdown to stop the spread of the virus and save lives because people matter.
@Paudie Ireland: If 0.008% of our population ended up critically ill and required ICU care we’d have run out of ICU beds.
@Daniel Kelly: And 2060 active cases, that’s probably 10 Cheltenhams to 20 Cheltenhams worth of infected cases or about 10,000 ski trips returning from Italy.
@David Jordan: only 5% of those dead died in icu the rest presumably at home in nursing home etc. it’s not like they cared too much about saving as much lives as possible most icus in the country are quiet. You could argue they would try to keep as much out of the hospitals to prevent having to choose to save one person or another but after the first few weeks of lockdown it was clear that wasn’t going to happen yet they still let people die whereas surely if they were placed in icu they’d have a better chance of surviving
@cian: No.
Up to May 24th, 3,222 people were hospitalised with COVID-19 and of these, 392 were moved to ICU. So 2,830 hospitalised patients did not go to ICU.
Of the 2830 patients in hospital not in ICU, 1243 died (46.6%) and of the 392 ICU patients 100 died (25.4%).
That’s a total of 1343 Covid-19 deaths in hospitals, from a total of 1608 deaths by May 24th.
Thus, approx. 265 died outside hospital.
Deaths associated with care homes account for about 60% of Covid-19 deaths, that means many care home residents were transferred to hospital before they died.
Refs.:
‘We are sensitive to mental health issue but we prefer them to have 4 months without the social contacts they are used to’
Why cant we meet our relative in the nursing home in the garden/court yard/ car park together but sitting apart . Many older people are happy to sit in one spot , the visitor in another designated spot outdoors . Everyone else is allowed ! My father locked away since the 6th March coming up on 3 months .
I don’t want to come across as callous or cold hearted but, given the risk and the effects of Covid in these settings already and given the likes of Skype/zoom which can easily be facilitated and set up by the staff for the residents, also given the fact that people can visit in the gardens etc for now, would it not be better to put the creativity and resources of the officials into accelerating the return to normal of the country at large?
@Dara O’Brien: yes Dara, some members of our society are more valuable than others, let’s focus on them!
@Patrick Leonard: Poor argument.
I’m not talking about lives, I’m talking about personal family & social visits which, as I pointed out can stall take place in a number of ways.
I am specifically talking about that versus people being able to get back to work, pay their bills, put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads, be able to visit all family members that aren’t in nursing homes.
I was making the point that all of the latter deserves the first attention and creativity, the former needs more time and can wait a bit longer.
What was your argument again?
@Dara O’Brien: Poor Argument! You claimed yourself that your position maybe “Callous or Cold hearted”, I am agreeing that it is.
@Dara O’Brien: A lot of places are doing exactly but a lot of residents especially those with Dementia don’t get it
A solution is give one hour, one day a week for visitation for a single family member of a resident. Therefore, families can change the person to visit each week at a designated time/day given by the nursing home with some flexibility. Based on what has happened with the virus and it’s ability to spread fast (contact tracing may be required) and multiple family visits per day just can’t happen. The staff can’t be overwhelmed by visitor’s or the day to day work won’t get done.
They should have been creative with regards to Nursing homes from the beginning of the crisis!
Ireland second highest percentage of Deaths from CV in Nursing Homes.
“Many nations were slow to respond to the threat at care home facilities, and the consequences for some of society’s most vulnerable people have been devastating.”
https://www.facebook.com/5550296508/posts/10160899527561509/?d=n
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