‘HIQA ran for the hills as crisis hit’
Owner says inspections at nursing home came far too late
GOVERNMENT health watchdog HIQA ‘ran for the hills’ as the Covid-19 crisis worsened, according to the owner of a nursing home that lost a fifth of its residents.
Tom Cummins said that he, his wife and his mother all contracted the disease, along with half of the residents – yet there were no Health Information and Quality Authority inspections once lockdown started.
Eventually, 20% of the residents at the Cherry Grove nursing home in Campile, Co. Wexford, died from the virus. ‘Inspections have now been stepped up and we had one this week, but it’s a bit like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted,’ Mr Cummins said.
During this week’s inspections, HIQA officials heard the nursing home staff explain that they were still traumatised by what they had witnessed, Mr Cummins said.
It emerged during a hearing of the Dáil’s Special Committee on Covid-19 Response that HIQA has not visited a single nursing home with a coronavirus case since March 1, and had only restarted inspections on May 27.
HIQA chief executive Phelim Quinn told the committee that the watchdog reserved the right to do what it calls ‘risk-based inspection’ throughout the pandemic.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Irish Daily Mail, Mr Cummins said that social distancing has now broken in many parts of the country and that Ireland should prepare itself for the second outbreak.
Mr Cummins said Cherry Grove had put in foot baths and other preventative measures long before the major outbreak, but the virus couldn’t be contained.
‘We had residents going to outside clinics for [non-coronavirus] treatment three times a week. In those circumstances, it is very difficult to contain the virus,’ he said.
All staff were due to be tested as part of a new HSE programme to test all nursing homes every week for the next month. Cherry Grove, which lost ten of its 50 residents, was hit by a peak of coronavirus outbreaks in April.
Mr Cummins said: ‘My office administrator said that the week of April 24 was a week that she wants to forget. We were losing people and staff had the virus.
‘It was a bit like the story of the Dutch boy who put his finger into the dam to stop it flooding, but then you have to put another finger into another hole in the , and then another, and then another. That’s what it felt like.’
Mr Cummins said the HSE nationally was very helpful, supplying PPE and staff when the coronavirus spread. He also said he had never previously employed any agency staff in 14 years of running the nursing home, but had to as staff contracted the virus.
‘The HSE paid for it but we had to arrange it and make sure the staff were not working anywhere else that might have the virus. The agency staff were very good, I must say. Other agency staff are only in it for the euro and I would never employ them – you are better off with your own staff,’ he said.
Mr Cummins said he and his wife, Siobhán, contracted the disease while helping residents. He also said that he would not ‘wish it on my worst enemy’.
He began to show symptoms on a Monday and woke up the next morning with pains in his legs.
He said: ‘I used to play hurling and I can only describe the pain as being like getting a belt of a hurley across the thighs. It is much, much worse than the flu. With the flu, you know how it’s going to present, but you don’t know with the coronavirus. Some people fly through it in a few days with little difficulty, others end up on ventilators.’
His temperature broke in a few days and he avoided the worst of the symptoms, whereas his wife had to go to hospital and had a worse experience. Both have now recovered, as have the staff and remaining residents. Cherry Grove has not had any Covid cases since late May.
Mr Cummins said: ‘Personally, I am only at about 85% of my former self. I am 62 and like to play hardball but I couldn’t play hardball now; I wouldn’t be able for it. There were lessons to be learned for the whole country and everywhere has suffered losses. We have to prepare ourselves for this second wave, and it will come.’
HIQA has not yet responded to a request for comment.
‘It is much, much worse than flu’