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
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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.
The coronavirus death toll in Spain surged to 2,182 on Monday after 462 people died within 24 hours, according to health ministry figures.
Meanwhile, the ice rink at the Palacio de Hielo, or Ice Palace, shopping centre in Madrid was turned into a temporary morgue to deal with a surge in deaths in the capital, a spokeswoman for Madrid city hall said.
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Earlier, the city hall said the city’s 14 public cemeteries would stop accepting more bodies because staff there did not have adequate protective gear.
“This is a temporary and exceptional measure which aims to mitigate the pain of the family members of the victims and the situation hospitals in Madrid are facing,” the regional government of Madrid said.
A nearby congress centre has been converted into a field hospital for coronavirus patients that will have a total of 5,500 beds.
The emergency clinic was set up on land belonging to the Ifema convention centre on the outskirts of Madrid. It will be equipped to treat patients needing intensive care.
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The elderly are especially vulnerable in the global pandemic and officials around the world are increasingly calling for extreme measures to safeguard them.
Retirement homes are “an absolute priority for the government”, Health Minister Salvador Illa told a press conference.
“We will exercise the most intensive monitoring of these centres.”
Under coronavirus protocols, health workers have been instructed to leave bodies in place in suspected Covid-19 deaths until the arrival of a doctor. But given the upsurge in deaths the delay can be lengthy.
The pandemic also claimed the first life of a health care worker in Spain last week: a 52-year-old nurse in the Basque Country, northeast Spain.
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Doctors, nurses and other health care workers accounted for over 10 per cent of all confirmed cases of coronavirus, the health ministry’s emergencies coordinator, Fernando Simon, said.
“This is a significant problem for our health care system,” he said.
Health care workers have for days complained that they are running short of equipment, such as masks.
The Spanish government said Saturday it would distribute another 500,000 masks to health care workers, and 800,000 for patients.
It also said it had also bought more than 640,000 coronavirus tests.
Authorities have called up 52,000 extra workers to help the country’s health service as it struggles to contain the virus, including 14,000 retired doctors and nurses.
Around 2,850 soldiers have been mobilised to disinfect airports and ports, and transport patients to less crowded hospitals.
Police said they were stepping up their reinforcing on the restrictions on movement.
Spain’s national police force tweeted a video of two officers on horseback chasing a man riding his bicycle in Madrid along with the warning that it would continue to crack down against the “irresponsible minority” that did not follow the rules.
“We know what the stakes are,” said the deputy head of the force, Jose Angel Gonzalez. “This week will be crucial.”
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