‘It broke my heart’: Families still banned from visiting COVID patients

More than three years after the pandemic began, and with people still being admitted to hospital with COVID-19, visitors remain banned from seeing patients with the virus, unless in exceptional circumstances, under Health Services Authority policy.

This has led at least one family of a COVID patient, who died on 8 Sept. last year, to plead with the HSA to change its policy so that patients don’t spend their last days without family members by their side.

Jeannette Watler says her 85-year-old stepfather, Freddie Watler, a retired cemetery caretaker from Bodden Town, spent almost two weeks in hospital on his own, with no family visits, because he had tested positive when he was admitted for another illness in August last year.

In a letter to the HSA requesting an urgent change to its no-visitor policy in COVID cases, she wrote, “It is inhumane and heartless for a family to be denied access to see their loved one, especially when the family was given no indication that he may not survive until approximately twelve hours before his death, as was the case with my stepfather.”

She told the Compass her family was finally allowed to see him the night before he died, at which point he was unresponsive.

She said they were only allowed to see him after begging a doctor to let them in. “Thank God for this man [the doctor] as we cannot imagine how much more we would be suffering today if we did not see him that night, although it broke my heart that my father was so far gone that he did not respond to me.”

The family say they were not informed that there was an option of communicating with Watler via a video link, which they say they were only informed about during a meeting at the hospital after he passed away.

In their letter to the HSA, they wrote, “It would have meant the world to us to have communicated with Mr. Watler during the two weeks he was hospitalized before he passed.”

Watler was blind, after losing his sight due to glaucoma in 2020, Jeannette said.

Policy under review

HSA Medical Director Dr. Delroy Jefferson, in response to a query from the Compass on hospital practice in relation to visitations for COVID-positive patients, said the policy is under review.

“Under normal circumstances, visitors to COVID-19 patients are still restricted,” he said. “The Health Services Authority understands that though there is a need for caution in hospital, there are circumstances in which the harm of not allowing visitors outweighs the benefits.

“For this reason, there are occasions in which visitors are allowed (with the appropriate PPE protection).”

Those occasions depend on the patient’s “clinical condition at the time of the visitation request or if the patient’s condition changes suddenly”, he said.

He added that a designated task force is carrying out an ongoing review of the policy and is considering changes “based on the current local and regional COVID-19 trends, with the intention to eventually remove all remaining restrictions”.

This task force is expected to meet again “within a few days”, Jefferson told the Compass on Tuesday, 9 May, and the topic of visitations for COVID-positive patients is one of the topics that will be discussed.

He said the hospital does allow families to visit patients with COVID-19, if they are wearing appropriate PPE, depending on the patient’s “clinical condition at the time of the visitation request or if the patient’s condition changes suddenly”.

Patients admitted with COVID are tested every five to 10 days, he said.

Regarding the family’s assertion that they were unaware the hospital could arrange communications between patients and families, Jefferson said the HSA does provides families of patients with COVID various ways to communicate with each other.

“While most patients use their own communication devices, there are audiovisual devices located at the nurses’ station on the wards that are connected to the patients’ room, allowing family members to see and communicate with patients in-person from the nurses’ station. For those who are physically unable to communicate, the staff assist by using HSA phone or tablet,” he said.

4 deaths with COVID in first 3 months of 2023

In the first three months of this year, 54 people were admitted to hospital locally with COVID-19, either testing positive during the admission process after arriving with other medical conditions or coming to the hospital with COVID symptoms. Since January this year, four people who had tested positive for COVID died in hospital.

Last week, the World Health Organization announced that COVID-19 no longer qualifies as a global emergency.

The dropping of the classification of COVID as an emergency brings little comfort to Jeannette Watler, and to Lloys Watler, Freddie’s wife, and to the rest of their family.

Jeannette says she hopes no other families have to endure the pain that hers has gone through.

She said hospital staff did not seem to be aware that families could be allowed in to see relatives if it seemed like the patient might not survive.

She added that her family getting to see her dad when he could have still recognised them “would have made the world of difference for our loved one and his family. We wouldn’t still be suffering today with the loss if we had been able to see him when he was conscious.”