The regional resolution offering150 euros ($163) to nursing homes for accepting Covid-19 patients to ease the burden on hospitals, contributed to the uncontrolled spread of the virus among health workers and elderly guests, turning these institutions into virus hotbeds.

Hosting Covid-19 patients in nursing homes was like lighting a match in a haystack.

“We read it twice, we did not want to believe what we read," says Luca Degani, president of UNEBA, the trade association that brings together about 400 rest homes in the region, "the virus affects everyone indistinctly, but its lethality and gravity takes a very significant logarithmic curve if people are aged and suffer multiple pathologies.”

“The fact that in our facilities we had people at greatest risk was a fact that had to be considered,” Degani explains to TRT World, “These structures are made to let the elderly socialise and be provided with adequate care. They are not made to respond to an acute disease caused by a pandemic infection.”

At least 1,822 people died in nursing homes in Lombardy, yet it is not known how many were actually killed by coronavirus as many were never swabbed.

Italian authorities have started investigations into nursing home deaths during the outbreak and police seized documents related to the Pio Albergo Trivulzio in Milan, a historic nursing home with over 1,000 elderly residents, and 13 other nursing homes in the region.

continues at https://pennyforyourthoughts2.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-massacre-of-italys-elderly-nursing.html