Care home facilities as new COVID-19 hotspots: Lombardy Region (Italy) case study

Abstract

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Older adults and COVID-19 pandemic: Resilience matters

“…The mortality rate of COVID-19 varied greatly between countries, but it may reach approximately 10 % in European countries (Omer, Malani, & Del Rio, 2020). Yet, the case fatality rate may reach 20 % among people aged over 80 years (Onder, Rezza, & Brusaferro, 2020), or with multimorbidity (Jordan, Adab, & Cheng, 2020;Logar, 2020;Niu et al, 2020). Until now, no effective therapeutics is available, so public health approach remained to be the most important strategy for COVID-19 control, including lockdown of communities or even cities, face mask ordinances, quarantine, and cordon sanitaire, and so on (Hartley & Perencevich, 2020).…”

“…Preventing functional declines, frailty, anxiety, depressive moods, and social isolation has become important but challenging tasks during COVID-19 pandemic (Chhetri et al, 2020;Lim et al, 2020). Older people with multiple comorbid health conditions are the most vulnerable populations during the COVID-19 pandemic (Jordan et al, 2020;Logar, 2020;Niu et al, 2020), so the heavy psychological burden may result in excessive health risk for older adults. Older persons with cognitive impairment or dementia may have difficulties to comprehend information related to COVID-19, to conduct self-protection, and their mood, behavioral and psychotic symptoms may aggravate when their usual care services are absent (Lim et al, 2020).…”

“…Traditionally, health care professionals are used to provide home-based programs specifically for older people with frailty, disability, or dementia, but now we need to develop home programs for relatively healthy older adults when outdoor activities are restricted. Older people receiving any forms of long-term care services were all strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic because home and community-based services are suspended, and nursing homes have become the hotspots of COVID-19 infections (Logar, 2020). The abovementioned disease control measures were accompanied by loneliness, social isolation, functional declines, and cognitive declines.…”

Looking at intra-hospital non COVID-19 mortality among elderly patients during COVID-19 pandemic

“…Anyway, our experience suggest that the consequence of exaggerated fears and misplaced priorities could be relevant as much as the pandemic (Jones, 2020). Thus, meeting the care needs of older adults isolated at home (Steinman, Perry, & Perissinotto, 2020), struggling to secure safe lockdown for elderly residents (Logar, 2020) and making hospital access safe and feeling safe (Asch, 2020) is fundamental during pandemic since restrictive measures, although effective in limiting pandemic spreading, could have relevant health consequences, expecially for frail elderly population (Plagg, Engl, Piccoliori, & Eisendle, 2020). Futhermore, the communication strategies during emergencies should be mastered and employed in a responsible way without exceeding in sensationalisms or terrifying messages whose consequences on public health could be even greater than the emergency itself.…”

Epidemiological characteristics of COVID-19 infection in the Republic of Srpska: A hundred days survey

“…It has been shown that virus can easily enter into the hospital settings and long-term care facilities and spread among vulnerable population, particularly elderly and people with chronic diseases. 17 According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) the reported deaths in long-term care facilities account for 30-60% of all COVID-19 deaths in many European countries. 18 Since 11 January 2020, when the first death case caused by COVID-19 was reported in China, the disease has become one of the leading infectious causes of death in number of countries around the world, with the total of 418.302 reported deaths globally, as of 12 June 2020.…”