Effects of Covid 19 and Human Interventions in Care Homes: Part 3

Why is there excess mortality in care homes, and are we going to do something about it?

This four-part series is dedicated to those who lost their lives while residing in care homes and to the bereaved families and their carers. The pain eventually goes away. The sadness and loss are there forever.

To sum up, so far, the evidence shows clear excess mortality during periods of maximum SARS-CoV-2 circulation attributable and not attributable to its effects. 

A further warning before we go further. We took a “Covid death” at face value, but we cannot know exactly what role SARS-CoV-2 played as none of the deaths was verified by post-mortem or by a detailed explanation of each case. It is likely that in a large proportion, SARS-CoV-2 was an accelerator or co-factor in elderly people’s death with multiple existing pathologies.

We identified 16 observational studies of exposures or interventions in 2020 that might explain some of the excess mortality beyond demographic factors such as age or frailty (see the list with links below). 

The first thing you notice is where studies were…