All outbreaks of covid-19 in Norwegian nursing homes must be registered in this system.
—
It did not happen when nurse Nina Solberg and her colleagues became ill. The outbreak was never notified as required by law.
—
The same thing has happened all over the country, BT’s investigation shows. The violations are massive, the official statistics strongly misleading.
——
Less than 30 minutes ago
–
On Thursday 1 October, nurse Nina Solberg went on duty as usual at Moer nursing home in Ås municipality. She was healthy and obvious. On Saturday she had a fever and did not feel well. She tested herself for covid-19.
On Tuesday, five days after she was last at work, the alarm went off. 14 employees and 20 residents were immediately quarantined and tested. It turned out that two more employees were infected.
She herself became very ill, with a fever and complete exhaustion.
– I have never experienced anything like it. It was a godsend that no patients were infected. That was my big fear, says Nina Solberg.
Nurse Nina Solberg eventually became really ill. Knut Egil Wang |
––
No one died of the infection at Moer nursing home. Not everyone has been equally lucky. Far more than half of those who have died of or with covid-19 in this country have died in a nursing home or a similar health institution. The authorities have had great difficulty in shielding the places where the weakest and most vulnerable live.
Precisely because infection in such institutions can have such fatal consequences, there are strict rules for how such outbreaks should be reported.
Central to the work is the National Institute of Public Health’s system Vesuvius, where all outbreaks must be registered.
Municipal chief physicians and hospitals are required by law to report all outbreaks of infectious diseases on an ongoing basis.
—-Moer nursing home in Ås municipality is one of many that have had corona outbreaks without it being captured in FHI’s statistics. Knut Egil Wang |
––
The messages should provide an overview of the outbreaks, so that those responsible can take the necessary measures.
The aim is to uncover outbreaks involving several institutions, and to be able to provide advice and help quickly. The reports will also provide a national overview, and gather experience about the causes of such outbreaks.
Since March last year, FHI has received 119 reports of outbreaks in nursing homes. They write in their latest weekly report that “the real number of eruptions (…) is higher than what is stated here, because not all eruptions are notified through Mount Vesuvius”.
But how many outbreaks have they never been notified of?
A survey by Bergens Tidende shows that the dark numbers are large:
Read the whole case with subscription
—
![Hip-Hop in China (with Lauren Teixeira) [EN] – Far East](https://files.fernostwaerts.de/images/icon.jpg "Hip-Hop in China (with Lauren Teixeira) [EN] – Far East"){kind=icon}