Isha Sesay
A CORONAVIRUS outbreak in a nursing home in Mallorca has left two elderly residents dead and caused 75 more to be infected.
The Balearic Ministry of Health confirmed the ‘serious detection’ of COVID-19 at the Sant Joan Senior Centre, which lies just on the outskirts of Manacor.
Officials say the outbreak was detected over the weekend after an employee began to experience symptoms of the virus.
A test was subsequently performed which provided a positive result.
Due to the nature of their work and given their close contact with the elderly, the Ministry ordered mass testing to be undertaken at the nursing home.
This yielded 75 positive results, just in the elderly residents – an alarming number considering that there are only 112 housed in the centre.
A total of 21 employees also tested positive and are all self isolating at home.
It also resulted in seven of the residents being rushed to hospital after presenting serious symptoms of the virus, two of whom later died.
According to the Ministry, one was already receiving regular palliative care.
The other went into respiratory failure and died not long after arriving at hospital.
The remaining five residents remain hospitalised and their condition has been described as ‘stable.’
The contact tracking team is now working to determine exactly how the outbreak occurred.
Residents do not have access to the outside, so the virus could only have entered the building through a visitor or employee.
The nursing home has since been closed to all visitors and staff, being divided into four areas by the IB-Salut health service to deal with the contagion.
These are as follows: confirmed positive patients, patients suspected of close contact, patients suspected of having symptoms and uninfected patients.
Meanwhile, the Balearic Islands continues to see a rise in infections, confirming more positive results in August than under Spain’s state of alarm.
So much so that the region set a new record for the highest number of diagnoses in a single day last month, with 908 people contracting COVID-19.
This brings the total number of active cases up to 2,612, with the majority being described as asymptomatic by the Ministry.
Although the Balearic government has stated their ‘concern over the second wave of coronavirus,’ the high number of infections can be attributed to their commitment to step up PCR testing across the region in recent weeks.
