Dilip Kuner
A GRIEVING husband who had been told his 85-year-old wife had died of COVID had the shock of his life when she turned up at his care home 10 days later.
Rogelia Blanco had been taken to hospital from the San Bartolomeu de Xove care home in Galicia on December 29 after testing positive for coronavirus
Her family was not allowed to visit her because of coronavirus restrictions. They were told that she died on January 13 and been quickly buried with none of the family in attendance.
Husband Ramon – who lives in the same care home – was distraught, telling La Voz de Galicia newspaper: “I could not believe it. I was crying, after the death of my wife.”
But after 10 days of grieving Rogelia turned up alive and well.
While, for her family, shock turned to joy, sadly the opposite was the case for her roommate. An identification mix-up meant that the unnamed woman’s family had been told she was alive.
Her brother said: “They told me she was cured, I traveled to see her and when I arrived I found out that she had been dead for 10 days.”
A spokesman for the San Rosendo Foundation, which runs the care home, said: “An identification error during the process of transfer from Xove to Pereiro de Aguiar led to the death of one of them being certified on January 13, although the identity was wrongly assigned.”
Now a court will have to annul the death certificate for Rogelia – until that is done she is officially dead.
