Halfway through April 2020, when the coronavirus was causing hundreds of deaths per day in Spain, Cristina, our K2.0 colleague from Spain, was discussing troubles with her mother in Ibiza over the phone.
“Thousands of people have died, most of them elderly, and nobody cares just because they are old!? Imagine if thousands of children died instead, within only two months! This is a massacre,” she told her daughter from their family home on the Mediterranean island.
It was already clear that the elderly were most vulnerable to the virus,while the pandemic was rapidly making the rounds in some EU countries like Italy, Spain and France.
Dr. Hans Henri P. Kluge, Regional Director for Europe of the World Health Organization said in April that observations in Europe show that the elderly are much more prone to the severe illness caused by COVID-19. He says that the overwhelming majority of coronavirus victims were older than 60, with the risk increasing for individuals who have at least one pre-existing condition — cardiovascular disease, hypertension and diabetes in particular — that primarily ail older people.
With these statistics in mind, Cristina’s mother’s words further intensified the fear of indifference for older generations. After the confirmation of the initial COVID-19 cases in Kosovo, lockdown and quarantined municipalities during spring, K2.0 wrote about the experiences of the elderly in the country — who were advised to shelter in place except in case of emergency.
The economy gradually reopened in June, and what seemed to be a calm start to the summer turned into the accelerated transmission of the virus all over the country during July and August. The public health system experienced a crisis when confirmed COVID-19 deaths increased daily.
Although the new measures that eased certain restrictions were introduced during the summer, a curfew that targeted older people was always in place, meaning that they were only allowed to move freely in the early morning and in the late afternoon.