AMADORA, Portugal (AP) – Tears well up in Diana Correia’s eyes when she remembers in October that 24 of the 55 residents of her residence in Portugal tested positive for COVID-19.
The impressive discovery sparked a struggle to enact the house’s contingency plan and tighten security procedures. With some troops sent in isolation, others worked double shifts of up to 16 hours in full protective gear, leaving them sweaty and tired. Some of the house’s residents, suddenly confined to their rooms or flat, were baffled and upset by the restrictions, even trying to take the elevator and flee the compound.
“Those were tough times,” Correia says, struggling to stay calm. “Very hard times.”
As the resurgence of the pandemic in the fall seemed to overwhelm the homes of Portuguese seniors like Correia, and the country’s public health service struggled to cope, the government mobilized all the resources it could. This included deploying military units.
The mission of the soldiers: to walk around the country to visit hundreds of residences and help strengthen their defenses against the pandemic.
Long-term care centers have been shown to be vulnerable around the world during the pandemic. The age of its residents, its physical proximity within what is essentially a large house, and the underlying health problems of residents put them at risk. In addition, the staff of the residences in Portugal usually work in various care homes and travel among them by public transport.
Noting that international data on COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes are “imperfect and limited,” a study from 21 countries in the international network of long-term care policies based in London, which includes scientific researchers , found in October that the average share of these homes from coronavirus deaths was around 46%.
The European Center for Disease Control, an EU agency that controls 31 countries, said the same month that up to 66% of all fatal cases of COVID-19 have been among nursing home residents.
According to this measure, Portugal has not gone wrong. Deaths at home as of Dec. 14 accounted for 30 percent of the country’s COVID-19 fatalities, the health directorate told The Associated Press.
On Friday, Portugal’s total death toll reached nearly 6,000.
In late September, for fear of a calamity, the Portuguese government sent a distress call to its military. In addition to assisting in tracking contacts, disinfecting buildings and providing beds for hundreds of virus patients in military hospitals, the armed forces were now being asked to bolster protections in nursing homes.
Dr. Maria Salazar, a doctor and colonel in the Portuguese Air Force, quickly developed a national program to train home care personnel in her workplace. The program also provides staff with the specific medical advice they need in near-daily online question-and-answer sessions with doctors, nurses, and pharmacists.
Within a week, the program was launched, coordinated from the CECOM military operations command center near Lisbon.
Approximately 140 teams of one to three people, taken from the Portuguese army, navy and air force, have been traveling across the country since early October. They have already been more than half of the 2,770 care homes targeted.
Salazar, a 49-year-old gastroenterologist, says the military presence is reassuring for residential staff and residents who were frightened by the threat of the virus and lacked desperate medical knowledge.
“Suddenly, all these staff … felt like they didn’t know what they were doing and that they were afraid to die,” Salazar says.
At the root of some confusing decision-making was simply fear. “We’ve identified it very clearly,” he says.
In a first phase, the troops personally go to the residences and give talks with slide presentations that go through the rudimentary rules of cooking, laundry, cleaning and social distancing. It is COVID-19 101.
Correia, technical director of a nursing home of the AFID Charity Association in Amadora, north of Lisbon, acknowledges that it is nothing that its employees have not heard many times before. The difference is who the instructions come from.
“It’s a voice from outside, a military voice with all the weight it carries,” he says.
In a recent afternoon session at AFID’s home, ten Correia staff members listened intently to the sergeant. Ari Silva, of the 2nd Lancers Regiment, whose barracks are nearby. Wearing a military gown, a beret and an olive mask, Silva asked his audience how many times they had washed their hands that day. A man sitting in front said four.
Silva wasn’t impressed: “Dude, I’ve done at least twice as much,” he said.
Correia, 38, explains that the benefits of military presence are both psychological and practical.
“We feel like someone out here is worrying about us,” he said. “It’s not just us who cares.”
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