Care homes went without masks for months, covid inquiry told

Nursing homes in the Netherlands were left without preventive face masks for months in 2020 after the government’s expert advisers rejected a call to supply them, a decision the nurses’ leader Bianca Buurman told the coronavirus inquiry was “not responsible”.

Buurman chaired the nurses’ professional association V&VN during the pandemic and advised the health ministry, sitting in on meetings of the expert Outbreak Management Team (OMT) and leading research into how the virus spread through care homes.

She asked in early April 2020 for masks to be made available to residents and staff, and for more testing. The OMT did not take up the advice and maintained for months that preventive measures in nursing homes were unnecessary. The guidance was not changed until August 2020, she said. Buurman called the episode “frustrating” and irresponsible.

A “silent disaster” The account adds to the picture set out by the Dutch safety board OVV, which concluded in 2022 that a silent disaster had unfolded in care homes. More than half of the official coronavirus deaths in 2020 occurred in care homes, the board found, and protective equipment such as masks was reserved for hospitals and acute care in the early weeks.

Buurman said the cabinet’s decision at the end of March 2020 to close nursing homes to visitors was understandable given the shortage of equipment, but “incredibly drastic”. Residents died without familiar faces around them, she said, and she would not back a blanket closure again, preferring measures tailored by region.

Nurses were “insufficiently heard” in the first phase of the crisis, Buurman added, and had no seat on key advisory bodies including the OMT. She has previously said the cabinet should apologise both for that and for the way the mask advice was handled.

Inspectorate caught off guard Friday’s hearings also heard from Marina Eckenhausen, who led the Health and Youth Care Inspectorate during the pandemic. She said the watchdog had been caught off guard by the cabinet’s decisions to close nursing homes and to group infected residents together, neither of which was discussed with it beforehand.

The inspectorate decided it was not its job to police the visitor ban at care home doors, Eckenhausen said, and at times could not advise properly because it received documents 15 minutes before meetings, or learned of new measures from the radio.

The inquiry, set up to examine the government’s handling of the pandemic, is hearing about 50 witnesses over nine weeks.

It has already been told that earlier action in March 2020 would probably have meant fewer deaths in the first wave.