The Health Department of the regional government of Catalonia (Spain) announced on 8 January that the aged care home run in the city of Reus by the Federation of Independent Evangelical Churches of Spain (Fieide) would be intervened.

The decision of the authorities came after 12 Covid-19 cases were detected among staff and residents. It was announced after talks with the leadership of the centre, the government explained.

“Our care home has been extremely careful in observing the protocols of the Covid-19 regulations. In fact, the home overcame the first big wave of the epidemic last year [spring] with no cases, and it was not until December that a first case was detected. The nursing home has followed the planned procedure as the first coronavirus cases were detected”, the Secretary General of FIEIDE, Francisco Portillo, told Spanish news website Protestante Digital.

The authorities in the Tarragona province had earlier confirmed that the evangelical centre “has acted correctly in the detection and approach of the outbreak”

A temporary intervention

The care home is now managed by an external medical doctor and a nurse while the director and the medical doctor of the home recover from the virus.

But the action of the authorities would be temporary, the FIEIDE says. “We understand that the intervention will end when our staff recovers health”.

Portillo added: “We are grateful for the help the Health Services of the Generalitat [Catalonia’s regional government] are providing to make sure the care home continues to operate in good conditions. We hope this situation is over soon”.

The evangelical care home is not the only that has detected Covid-19 cases in the city of Reus lately. Another centre also suffered five positive cases, and nine staff are quarantined.

FIEIDE, an evangelical denomination with over 100 churches across Spain, underlines that their care home “has an excellent reputation in the city of Reus” and that the cases have to be seen in a challenging context of a third wave of the pandemic hitting all of Spain. “The circumstances are what they are, and the intervention was needed”, they add.