The only son of a COVID-19-positive couple at Residenza San Ġużepp is feeling “scared, lost and frustrated” as his vulnerable parents are locked away in their room at the Fgura home that has experienced an outbreak of the virus.

Dario Farrugia is kept informed and reassured about their condition on a daily basis by the home’s management and is told they are being monitored regularly by a doctor.

But being on the outside has not been easy, while his parents, in their 70s and having other health complications, are now one week into lockdown with no end in sight. 

“God knows when they will recover, and when they do, they will have to quarantine,” said Farrugia, who was informed about his parents' positive results about a week ago and followed up on whether they were just being left to their own devices.

To make matters worse, although his parents are currently asymptomatic, his father has a heart condition while his mother is a wheelchair-bound diabetic, with both legs amputated from the knee down.

Being restricted to one bedroom, albeit spacious, in a wheelchair and unable to move about on her prosthetic limbs could have other health implications, Farrugia said about the sense of confinement his mother is feeling.

“My mother has been through a lot, health-wise, and she can get confused. The room has a window, but she is scared to look out of it because she fears there is no glass,” said the son, who calls them every day.

“Only this morning, she was screaming that she wants to go out, and my dad has to try and calm her down,” he said, adding that she is not easily convinced.

“She needs to be accompanied,” he said, referring to a recent incident where “she was simply discharged from hospital because she refused to undergo tests and there was no one to explain her situation.

“The thing is I am not even sure it would make sense to take her for a solitary stroll out of the room for fear that she could catch a cold and further aggravate matters,” Farrugia said.

While stressing that the home has been helpful and insisting he is not pointing fingers, he cannot but feel “helpless”.

He does not know what can be done and what is best for them. “It is not like I can take them out of the home. They have the virus and would need to be isolated anyway. Where could I take them? The next step would be the hospital.

'Health workers must be horrified'

“At the home, they are being monitored, and I cannot do more than they are doing,” he said, expressing concern also for the health workers, who must be “horrified”.

Farrugia has not seen his parents since August, when visitors stopped being allowed in the home and they could not go out as safety measures were stepped up.

The most he has done is drop off basic food requirements which are delivered to their room after a couple of days. Like other elderly people, they only had a short window of ‘freedom’ in the summer and their son did not even risk taking them out and about.

His message to those who are not taking the issue seriously is to exercise caution and understand what the more vulnerable members of society are going through.

He always had trust in the safety of the home, where his parents have resided for over a year, and the way it is being run, although he admitted to being slightly let down by the way the situation has now evolved.