The Royal Gazette (22nd April 2020) reports the following on what was described as slow reaction after a senior was tested positive for Covid-19 almost two weeks ago:-  

A nurse at Bermuda’s largest residential home for seniors tested positive for Covid-19 almost two weeks ago but a plea for everyone else at the facility to be immediately screened for the coronavirus was not acted on.

Barbara Lee, the chairwoman of the board of trustees of Westmeath Residential and Nursing Home, said last night she e-mailed David Burt, the Premier, as soon as the employee got her test results to highlight the “urgent” need for all 55 residents and 40 staff members to be tested.

She added that Cabinet secretary Major Marc Telemaque had replied to say he would forward the e-mail to Mr Burt. 

Mrs Lee said Major Telemaque later told her an investigation had been launched and contact tracing for the nurse was being carried out. But Covid-19 testing for the rest of Westmeath’s staff and its patients was not done. 

Mrs Lee added that after the nurse tested positive she “wrote to the Premier and said ‘you have to do this’. I said ‘look at what’s happening to those homes in the United States’ ... I said ‘we have to be tested’.”

She said the home had a large number of “extremely vulnerable” seniors. She added: “I did as much as I could possibly do. There is no blood on my hands.”

Mrs Lee was speaking after the private home on Pitts Bay Road, Pembroke, was revealed by the Ministry of Health last night to have three cases of Covid-19 — two staff members and one patient.

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