By Caroline Pailliez and Matthias Galante
PARIS (Reuters) – When managers at La Riviera nursing home on France’s Cote D’Azur found out a resident had the COVID-19 virus, they put into action a standard playbook they believed would contain the spread. It did not.
“We kept on seeing new cases and we could not understand why,” said Antoine Ruplinger, an executive with the company that runs the home.
Since then 36 residents at the home have died of coronavirus-related conditions, according to the local mayor’s office, which registers the deaths. There were 109 residents before the coronavirus crisis broke.
Death rates from COVID-19 in old people’s homes around the world have been high, in part because the disease hits the elderly disproportionately and because testing at care homes has been patchy.
What happened at La Riviera underlines the potential…