The first trial into elderly deaths in a care home during the covid pandemic found the horror that the relatives of 18 of the 74 victims of Alcoy (Alicante) suspected and had reported. “People who have met deceased in the roomspeople who were in the same room where one person had died and the other did not”, described the president of the Association of Relatives Affected in the Domus Vi residences of Alcoi and Cocentaina, Jose Luis Garcia.
After the second session of this civil trial, in which they claim two million euros compensation and above all, “knowing what happened”, new testimonies from the staff of the geriatric center revealed more details about this tragedy of 74 deaths in just one month, which began in March 2020 with the start of the pandemic and confinement.
As the main aggravating factor, precisely an isolation which despaired the relatives of these victims. We now learn that the head of the Home Hospitalization Unit (UHD) of the Virgen de los Lirios Hospital in Alcoy, Manuel Pérez, requested the numbers of phone of the parents to inform them directly of the situation of each resident, but it they denied from the management of the center, as stated by this doctor, who also saw people directly in the facilities asking for water or lying on the ground, without any supervision.
“The assistants asked the management to help them transfer certain people, the delay in their transfer and the people who requested to be transferred they will go out from there,” added García, about the cruel coexistence of the living and the dead in the same space despite warnings from the employees themselves to remedy it.
These and other circumstances caused a deep impression and “emotion” among the relatives of the fatal victims, who regret such behavior.inhuman» by not allowing them to communicate with their elders, in addition to confirming the absolute absence of means to have stopped the spread of the virus. corona virusif it was already difficult at that time in any closed space.
At the start of the epidemic, nursing home staff only had a mask for all those who had to share, disinfect it with alcohol. “Then they were provided with masks which they had to wear for several days. They ignored the protocols and all the means of prevention and precautions that should have been taken and you are starting to confirm that many things were done wrong,” underlined the president of the family association.
Around thirty people, including witnesses and experts, are expected at this trial which will end on October 11. The plaintiffs ruled out criminal proceedings because the lawyers and the Alicante public prosecutor’s office had recommended it, because as part of a global pandemic had less chance of prospering, as was the case with other trials attempted in Madrid and Barcelona, with whose victims they showed their empathy from Alcoy. They also expressed their surprise that justice was not taking care of them, when so many thousands of deaths had taken place.
