Over 4,000 Covid victims at Madrid care homes ‘could have been saved’

Citizen-led commission suggests deaths may have been avoided if transfers to hospital were allowed

The lives of more than 4,000 care home residents in Madrid could have been saved if the regional government had allowed them to be treated in hospitals, the findings of a citizen-led Covid commission have suggested.

Launched in April last year, the commission spent months researching and compiling the testimonies of family members, care home staff and experts in an attempt to piece together how the region’s residential homes came to rank among Europe’s deadliest in the early months of the pandemic.