| The Ehehaltenhaus-St. Nikolaus nursing home in Wurzburg has roots deep in Europe’s history of infectious diseases. The site was a “domus leprosarium” in the 12th century, used to quarantine lepers outside the German city’s gates.
Last month, it became the new coronavirus’s entryway to Bavaria.
The first person the virus killed there, on March 12, was an 83-year-old resident of the nursing home. The infection spread fast. By March 21, it had struck 34 residents and killed nine. More than 50 of the institution’s workers were in quarantine.
Death tolls from the virus in Europe are tightly linked to countries’ capacity to handle situations like this, Bloomberg News reports today. As many as half the people killed by the coronavirus in Europe were residents of long-term care facilities, according to the World Health Organization. “This is an unimaginable human tragedy,” said Hans Kluge, regional director for WHO Europe.
Elderly residents at a care home for senior citizens in Paris.
Photographer: Nathan Laine/Bloomberg
As European governments move to ease restrictions and get businesses up and running, they’ll need a plan for how to deal with the nearly 4 million people in the region’s care homes. Numbers released this week in Germany, which has mastered its epidemic better than most, show how challenging that can be. Between one-third and half of all German virus deaths have been linked to care homes of some kind.
The statistics aren’t completely reliable because even Germany’s vaunted public-health surveillance system hasn’t been able to account for the location of each death. In other European countries, such as the U.K., Italy and Spain, the numbers are even murkier.
Yet to protect the most vulnerable, countries will need not only to count precisely but to zero in on nursing-home cases before one infection turns into slaughter.
The Wurzburg nursing home’s story is a cautionary tale—but also a sign of hope. Workers there had to scramble to get protective equipment. Not until late March were all residents tested. Finally, on March 28, they were quarantined in two groups: those who had the virus and those who did not.
The outbreak killed 25 residents. But as of Thursday, 49 had recovered. Last week, they were allowed to walk outside in the garden again for the first time.—Naomi Kresge |