Spanish troops brought in to help tackle the spread of the coronavirus outbreak have discovered elderly people “dead and abandoned” at their retirement homes, according to the country’s defence minister.
Some elderly residents were “completely left to fend for themselves, or even dead, in their beds”, Margarita Robles told Spanish TV channel Telecinco when discussing the COVID-19 crisis.
She did not say what had caused the deaths, how many people the soldiers found or where they were discovered, but she said authorities would use the full force of the law to punish those responsible.
The Defensor del Paciente, a privately-funded patients’ ombudsman group, said it has filed complaints of negligence with the public prosecutor and asked for in-depth investigations into the management of three homes nationwide.
The number of coronavirus-related deaths in Spain has risen by 514 to 2,696, with more than 6,000 new cases reported.
There have now been 39,673 confirmed coronavirus cases in the country, up from 33,089 on Monday.
There are about 5,500 care homes across Spain and all of them – of which two-thirds are privately run – are locked down, with their almost 400,000 elderly residents cut off from their families.
