Citizen-led commission suggests deaths may have been avoided if transfers to hospital were allowed

The lives of more than 4,000 care home residents in Madrid could have been saved if the regional government had allowed them to be treated in hospitals, the findings of a citizen-led Covid commission have suggested.

Launched in April last year, the commission spent months researching and compiling the testimonies of family members, care home staff and experts in an attempt to piece together how the region’s residential homes came to rank among Europe’s deadliest in the early months of the pandemic.

What they claimed to have found was that the number of patients being transferred to hospitals in Madrid plunged just as infections began to rise in March 2020, said the commission’s 148-page report, published earlier this month. Instead, care homes grappling with staff shortages and lacking protective gear such as masks, medication and treatments such as oxygen, were allegedly left to their own devices.