COVID-19 and the consequences of isolating the elderly

Governance of the Covid-19 response: a call for more inclusive and transparent decision-making

“…Vulnerable groups 11 such as the disabled, 12 those with serious mental health conditions, 13 single mothers, 14 people in abusive family relationships 15 and the elderly 16 bear the burden of the negative consequences of isolation and loneliness, potentially threatening the social fabric of society. Civil society organisations, community groups, social workers, nurse-caregivers and many other groups are at the front lines with this broad cross-section of society clearly affected by the far-reaching effects of mass isolation.…”

COVID-19 and the Elderly: Who Cares?

“…However, in times of shortages of nursing staff, we need to take care of both formal and informal caregivers and provide them with adequate protective equipment. Elderly people in need of care are particularly dependent on family and friends and may also rely on the support of voluntary services and social care (9). If we do not take care of nurses and informal caregivers, the system may collapse, either because caregivers transmit the virus to the elderly or because they are no longer able to provide care due to their own illness or time in quarantine (10).…”

COVID-19 Trend Estimation in the Elderly Italian Region of Sardinia

“…Several Chinese studies showed that the peak value persistently decreases by reducing contact rate, but may either delay or bring forward the peak by 6.5-9 days (min-max = 5-9). Since the isolation of people can significantly lower the peak and reduce the cumulative number of predicted reported cases, even in an elderly population (38), the results of the present study can suggest that enforcing the restrictive measures can rapidly improve the situation. When the disease arrived in Sardinia, the restrictive measures were already in place, thus the peak of the disease could occur later than in the rest of Italy.…”

“…The infected people could die at rate δ, or recover at rate β. In order to provide a useful instrument to stakeholders, given that the disease is particularly aggressive in elderly patients (38), the amount of the Sardinian population over 60 years who became infected with and died of COVID-19 has been estimated based on Sardinian SIRD models results and tajes into account the infectious rate and lethality by ageclasses rate proposed by Istituto Superiore di Sanità (39). The models were stochastically implemented in R-software (Version 3.6, R-Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria); "deSolve" R package was used for implementation and solution of differential equations (40).…”