The Galician Federation of Associations of Relatives and Users of Residences for Majors and Dependents (REDE) accuses the Xunta de Galicia of falsifying downward the data of people who died in those centers during the first nine months of the covid Pandemic under the Government of Alberto Nunez Feijoo.
The Department of Social Policy, which until now had refused to provide information some on mortality in each of the centers for the elderly in Galicia during the Pandemic, ensures that between March and November 2020 509 people died in residences. REDE ensures that through official sources and direct witnesses have confirmed a minimum of 567 deathswhich could be many more given that, in the opinion of its spokespersons, the Xunta continues to falsify and hide information.
Last Tuesday, the digital newspaper Praza Pública published a document with the distribution of deaths in each residence, signed by the general director of Majors and Social Health Care, Antonio Acevedo Prado. The Xunta sent it almost two years later that the newspaper asked for these data, required by the Superior Court of Justice of Galicia, which dismissed several appeals from the Domusvi company. That is, the one that accumulates more than half of the deaths in residences in Galicia and whose CEO in Galicia, Josefa Isabel Fernández Miguélez, was dismissed in XX of XX.
REDE believes that the Xunta “cuts off and manipulates the data in an interested way” because only evaluates deaths certified by covid, without taking into consideration those cases that were presumed to be caused by the virus due to the symptoms of those affected, although they had not undergone the mandatory diagnostic test. “This restrictive or limiting manipulation of data goes against what is established by the World Health Organization“, which in June 2020 asked all governments that they recognize as deaths from covid “both confirmed and suspected cases”.
REDE claims to have documents of the Xunta itself and of direct testimonies of workers, users and relatives that the deaths from covid were more than those recognized by the Xunta in at least five centers: in Domusvi Barreiro, in Vigo, would have been 47, and not 32; in Domusvi San Lazaro, in Santiago, 53 and not 41; in Domusvi Aldán-Cangas, also in the province of Pontevedra, 38 and not 30; in the residence of San Carlos, property of the San Rosendo Catholic Foundationin Celanova (Ourense) owned by the Bishopric of that city, would be 11, and not nine, and in the residence of Salvaterra de Miñoin Pontevedra, 35 dead and not 24 as the Xunta assures.
Precisely, REDE recalls that the figure of 35 deaths from covid in the Salvaterra residence appears in a official information from the Inspectorate for the Elderly, Disabled and Dependent of the Ministry of Social Policy prepared in 2021 in response to the family of one of the victims. Public has had access to that document, which certifies the veracity of the association’s version.
The relatives and users of the residences accuse the general director of Maiores, Antonio Acevedo, of restricting the information on deceased by covid, both among the residents and among the center templatesand of having placed Galicia “in the information transparency queue in the Spanish State”.
The Ministry of Social Policy is directed by Fabiola Garciaa 37-year-old law graduate and married to Lucas Martinón, one of the most important people in the circle closest to Feijóo and who was deputy director of the electoral campaign that gave him his first absolute majority; press officer of the president and later general director of Communication of the Xunta. Since the end of 2020 it is cindependent strategy and communication consultant.
Public has addressed the Department of Social Policy to inquire about the assessment made by the department of Fabiola García on the accusation of the families of the victims who died in the Galician residences. Sources of Social Policy promised to offer a response that At the time of writing this article, it had not yet arrived..
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