At the start of the corona crisis, the government also paid too little attention to the protection of vulnerable elderly people in nursing homes. A “silent disaster” unfolded in the nursing homes.
The council writes that noises from the institutions “were insufficiently heard”, with serious consequences. “In the beginning, the protective equipment was mainly available for hospitals and acute care and not for nursing homes.” This concerns, for example, mouth caps.
Once it became clear how serious the situation was, the cabinet imposed a visit ban at the request of the sector. “This had a major social and psychological impact, due to loneliness and because family members could not always say goodbye to their loved ones,” said the OVV.
Improvements to the crisis approach are necessary, according to the OVV.
Van Dissel
The Dutch Safety Board also concludes that the Outbreak Management Team and the cabinet mainly focused on combating the coronavirus. That perspective remained dominant and that is because RIVM boss Jaap van Dissel “was present in almost all crisis teams”, concludes the Dutch Safety Board.
According to the council, “the dominance of this perspective made it more difficult for consultants and decision-makers to look beyond the theme of infectious diseases.”
Van Dissel is chairman of the Outbreak Management Team, which has advised the cabinet over the past two years on how to tackle the corona virus. He is director of the Center for Infectious Disease Control of the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM). He is also professor of infectious diseases at the LUMC university hospital in Leiden.
Coherence corona measures
Due to the design of the investigation of the Dutch Safety Board into the approach to the corona crisis, the ‘coherence between certain topics’ has become out of sight. That is what the then Minister of Health Hugo de Jonge wrote in a reaction to the findings included in the report.
According to De Jonge, it was unavoidable that the research looked at individual sub-topics, but the overall context did not come into focus as a result. For example, general corona measures were also taken to protect vulnerable people living in nursing homes.
“This also sheds a different light on the conclusion that the situation in nursing homes received insufficient attention, not to mention the fact that the visit ban was decided early in the crisis, one of the most drastic measures during the entire corona crisis.”