Coronavirus: UK retirement homes sound the alarm

Text by: Muriel Delcroix Follow

In the United Kingdom, retirement home officials warn that the coronavirus is having a severe impact on their establishments and criticize the government, which systematically omits the deaths of elderly people in its daily count. They are asking for emergency government assistance.

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From our correspondent in London,

" The elderly are abandoned like lambs in the slaughterhouse ". This shocking sentence is due to the conservative Baroness Ros Altmann, former Minister of Pensions who, with many officials in the sector, denounces the silence of the British authorities on the devastation caused by the coronavirus in hospices and retirement homes.

The pandemic has caused 12,107 deaths so far, but government statistics only include deaths in hospitals and not in retirement homes or homes, raising fears of a much heavier death toll.

Some 400,000 older people live in around 11,000 retirement homes in the UK; more than 2,000 of these establishments are now affected by the epidemic.

Several associations therefore claim a count including the deaths in retirement homes as well as emergency aid in the face of the epidemic when their establishments all lack protective equipment and their residents are not given priority to be tested.

On the defensive, the government ensures that retirees and their carers have " not been forgotten " and promises to do everything to remedy the situation, but without further details as the country expects to reach a peak of illness in the next few days.

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