Spain’s grim coronavirus picture: ice rink now a morgue, dead abandoned in retirement homes
- Death toll in Europe’s second hardest hit country after Italy doubled in just days to almost 2,200
- Madrid converts Olympic-sized ice rink to a morgue, near a conference centre kitted out with hospital beds
Spanish soldiers deployed to help fight the new coronavirus outbreak have found elderly patients abandoned, and sometimes dead, at retirement homes, as an ice rink inside a Madrid shopping centre was turned into a temporary morgue to cope with a surge in cases.
The army has been charged with helping to disinfect retirement homes in Spain, one of the countries worst hit by the pandemic. Dozens of deaths from Covid-19 have been recorded at facilities across the country.
“We are going to be strict and inflexible when dealing with the way old people are treated in these residences,” Defence Minister Margarita Robles said.
“The army, during certain visits, found some old people completely abandoned, sometimes even dead in their beds,” she added.
An investigation has been launched, the general prosecutor announced.