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Ed Jones/AAP
Safe homes
How did Hong Kong and South
Korea record no coronavirus
deaths in aged care?
By Conor Burke
There have been no residential aged
care deaths due to COVID-19 in
either South Korea or Hong Kong,
despite both regions having thousands of
positive cases.
Experts told British MPs and members
of the Commons Health and Social Care
Committee that due to decisive and strict
infection control measures, not one of
the four deaths in Hong Kong or the 266
in South Korea occurred in residential
aged care.
That is in stark contrast to the crisis in
the UK, where an estimated 22,000 people
have died in aged care homes. That figure
is more than double the official figure the
government has announced, which experts
say does not paint an accurate picture of
the crisis in British aged care homes.
Professor Terry Lum, head of social care
policy at the University of Hong Kong,
told the MPs that authorities were vigilant
about the potential for the virus to spread
from hospitals to care homes and took
the extreme step of quarantining residents
with positive results for three months, as
reported by The Guardian.
“We do a very good job on isolation.
Once we have any person infected,
we isolate them in hospital for three
months, and at the same time we
isolate all the close contact people in a
separate quarantine centre for 14 days for
observation,” he said.
“They do tests regularly in that 14 days
to make sure they don’t have the virus.
We use a supercomputer to trace the
close contacts of people being infected,
particularly for cluster outbreaks.”
Lum also told the MPs that all nursing
homes drilled infection outbreak scenarios
four times a year and employed an
infection controller as standard practice.
Adelina Comas-Herrera, from the
London School of Economics, told MPs
the reason that South Korea had no
recorded aged care home deaths was also
because of the speed at which authorities
took action.
“In South Korea, there hasn’t been a
single death of a care home resident in a
care home.
“That is because anybody with suspected
COVID-19 was immediately isolated, and
if they tested positive they were removed
into quarantine centres or hospitals. So, not
a single person has died with COVID-19 in
a South Korean care home.”
MPs told Lum that the results in Hong
Kong were surprising given the proximity
to mainland China. Lum said that efforts to
avoid the virus started in aged care before
a single case had been found, with staff
wearing masks since January, visitation
restrictions and three-month stores of PPE
key to the success.
Australia has had mixed results in
keeping the virus out of aged care. There
have been 97 confirmed COVID-19 cases
across residential and home aged care,
with 30 deaths.
Nationwide, there have been 7345
confirmed cases, with 33 cases currently
receiving hospital treatment, five of
whom are in ICU. The death toll stands
at 102.
Globally, there are now over 8 million
cases, with 435,000 deaths. The US,
Brazil and Russia are the worst-affected
countries to date. ■
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