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The number of deceased by Covid-19 in Spanish nursing homes they have doubled in the last week from 86 to 169, and casualties due to contagion among workers in these centers have also increased, reaching 8,632, according to the latest update of data from the Institute for the Elderly and Social Services (IMSERSO), published this Friday.
Specifically, the data shows that in the second week of 2022 (from January 10 to 16) there were 169 deaths of residents of these centers because of the Covid-19, 83 more than the previous week, almost double. At the same time, infections have also increased to 12,866, 60.3% more than the previous week, when 8,026 were registered.
In total, so far in 2022, there have been 255 deaths of the elderly in residences, which represents a lethality of 1.2 percent, according to the same data. In addition, the report indicates that in the residential centers with positive cases in the second week of January 2022 there was an average of 9 cases per outbreak.
By autonomous communities, Catalonia and Madrid are the communities with the highest number of deceased residentss by Covid-19 in the last week, with 31 and 29 deaths, respectively. They are followed by the Basque Country, with 16 deaths; Aragon and Castilla-La Mancha, with 15; and Castilla y León, with 14.
Likewise, the staff layoffs that works in residences has also increased by 3.1% in the last week, according to the count made from IMSERSO data. Specifically, in the last week there were 8,632 nursing home workers infected with Covid-19, 265 more than the previous week, when they were 8,367.
Residences “on the edge”
Precisely, this Friday, the Dependency Care Business Circle (CEAPs) has warned that residences for the elderly in Spain are “on the edge”, in a “really worrying” situation due to the “high casualties” in the workforce caused by the sixth wave of Covid-19.
For this reason, he has asked the government that create “urgently” a specific job bank to work in residences for the elderly, which “increases” the measures and “makes more flexible” the hiring of professionals, in the same way as is done in the health sector, beyond those approved last December that allow, as an exception, to hire staff without qualifications in residential centers due to the pandemic situation.
“It gives us some air, but they are just a patch”, has valued the president of CEAPs, Cinta Pascual, insisting that greater flexibility is needed with the ratios and profiles of professionals and, above all, “greater planning in the short and medium term”.