Staff count emotional cost as virus savages UK nursing homes

SELSTON, England (AP) — Lucy Dawson is haunted by a sense of powerlessness.

The nurse has equipment to treat the residents of the nursing home where she works when they become sick with the coronavirus — but it doesn’t seem to make any difference.

“We’ve got fluids, or we’ve got oxygen on the go. You know, you name it, we’ve got it,” said the nurse at Wren Hall, a small home for elderly people with dementia in the central England village of Selston.

But still, “it’s bereavement after bereavement,” said Dawson, who has worked at the home for two decades. “We’re losing people that we’ve loved and looked after for years.”

The coronavirus pandemic is taking a huge emotional and physical toll on staff in Britain’s nursing homes, who often feel like they're toiling on a forgotten front line.

The virus is sweeping like a scythe through Britain’s 20,000 care homes and has left thousands of elderly people sick and dead. At Wren Hall, 12 of 54 residents died in three weeks after contracting COVID-19.

“To be putting your heart and soul into nursing somebody to sustain life, it’s just a massive devastation when ...,” Dawson trailed off. “I’ve just got no words.”

It’s a tragedy being repeated across the U.K. and around the world. While the coronavirus causes mild to moderate symptoms in most who contract it, it can result in severe illness in some, especially older people.

Britain’s official tally of almost 19,000 coronavirus-related deaths — including at least 15 nursing home workers — counts only those who died in hospitals. Official statistics show over 1,000 more virus-related deaths in homes in England and Wales up to April 10. In Scotland, which keeps separate records, a third of virus deaths have been in homes for the...