This was stated by ANIL president Anne-Marie Hanff in an interview with RTL, and also recommended during the general meeting of the ANIL this past Friday.
An independent audit should take place to establish why there have been clusters of Covid cases in retirement and care homes, she said.
This should be done by a person familiar with the sector, who could look to international guidelines for elder care during Covid and examine to what extent these are implemented or why, in some cases, they are not.
Then they could determine how some institutions and employees could be supported to better do their work. It would also be useful to analyse how the different care homes differ epidemiologically, to help understand the phenomenon, says Hanff.
She could not confirm that only 50% of personnel were willing to get the vaccine.
"What we see is that nurses are happy to get the vaccine and to get their invitation. There are many still waiting and much remains to be done. We have heard that 92% of nurses are vaccinated. This is an unofficial number we got from the homes, but it is very far from the 50% cited."
The ANIL president also stressed that there are other people working in care homes. Nurses and aides make up around 65% of personnel.
Nurses are feeling misunderstood and abandoned, she said.
No national guidelines had been issued for elderly care, with the argument that homes should get to decide for themselves. But then one would expect that compulsory vaccination would be off the table until it was established that personnel had all the support it needed.
Solutions are needed now, not political wrangling, according to Hanff.
