Preventing a dementia sufferer in a residence for the elderly from being visited by relatives is creating worse repercussions back home, a son has said, calling on the government to review its strategy on family contact “imposed” on St Vincent de Paul Residence.

Until last week, SVP protocol, as approved by the health authorities, put wards in quarantine once a resident or staff member tested positive, the CEO of the care home, Josianne Cutajar, confirmed with Times of Malta.

“Now, since the clinical scenario is more positive, following the successful vaccination programme, these measures have already been eased in that each case is discussed individually with the health authorities and quarantine is only imposed depending on the particular context,” she reassured.

But, Pawlu Mizzi wrote to a host of authorities and politicians, including Prime Minister Robert Abela, Health Minister Chris Fearne and the Superintendent of Public Health, Charmaine Gauci: “You are killing patients by solitude, despair and anger instead of COVID-19.”

Highlighting the insensitivity, lack of planning and the “misery” his family was in, he asked for immediate and sensible action to ease what he termed “excessive” measures, particularly now that his parents were both vaccinated.

Earlier this month, in-person visits were finally resumed in care homes for up to two people from the same household. They must maintain a two-metre distance anyway and the removal of Perspex barriers evoked mixed reactions of relief and a feeling of less safety.

But Mizzi was told that the government-run residence had to put every single person in the ward into 15-day quarantine if one of them tested positive.

His 72-year-old mother had already been through this, but just as the quarantine period was over and his father was due to visit, he was informed at the eleventh hour that another two weeks of isolation had started again in her dementia ward.

Calling out the lack of communication, Mizzi said they only found out about the cancellation of the long-awaited meeting because they wanted to confirm the time of the visit.

I would prefer to see them die content together in each other’s company than living like this

A painful separation

The news left his 74-year-old father livid and upset. Mizzi said his father was confirmed to be suffering from depression because he had not been able to visit his wife and was riddled with the guilt that he had put her in a home.

It would mean not seeing her for a month, he said, indicating that their last proper contact was back in July when measures were slightly eased.

The patient suffered from a severe and complicated form of dementia that made it impossible for her husband to care for her. Reluctantly, he was convinced to “let go”, visiting her for six hours a day, every day, before the pandemic broke out.

In her answer to Mizzi, Cutajar explained the residence was still operating in “bubbles” of wards as advised by the health authorities and offered to assist with “limited visitation”, which would be coordinated in due course.

Praising the long-term care facility and its management’s “excellent” service, Mizzi said it had become a second home since his mother was moved there two years ago.

He acknowledged that their hands were tied but, given that “COVID-19 is not disappearing”, he had urged the residence to ease the rigid precautionary rules in view of the negative impact on families, which is now getting “out of hand”.

Considering the lesser of two evils, Mizzi told the government: “Rest assured that I would prefer to see them die content together in each other’s company than living like this.

“If COVID-19 were on the way out, we would be more patient but we cannot avoid taking risks and risk letting these people die alone,” he said.

Stressing that “it hurts”, Mizzi said that, in trying to save the life of an elderly dementia sufferer, other hardships had been caused elsewhere.

Being fully vaccinated made the couple’s separation even more incomprehensible, Mizzi said, highlighting the irony that, before the jab, they could at least meet behind a Perspex screen.

“My mother does not communicate at all,” he said, suggesting that the separation could easily be remedied.

Mizzi reckons that, with his mother’s ward located on the ground floor, she could just be wheeled out into the open air, where they would stand at an appropriate distance in the “enormous” space and interact for 30 minutes.

“Unfortunate as it may be, some residents at St Vincent de Paul have absolutely no visitors,” Mizzi said, adding that, for those who do, he wanted to raise his voice, maintaining that “many” were in the same predicament.

It was ironic, too, that family members could not visit their elderly relatives when alive but are invited into the ward when they die for a “final look”, he continued.

The situation, Mizzi said, also raised questions about how many elderly residents at SVP were contracting the virus and why, if no one was allowed in except for staff.

Post-vaccination positive cases at the residence have reduced “drastically”, Cutajar said in response to whether residents were testing positive despite being inoculated.