Relatives of COVID-19 victim calls for probe into circumstances leading to death

Grieving relatives of a 79-year-old woman who succumbed to COVID-19 a week ago are demanding an investigation into what happened to her while she was at the Harrison Point Isolation Facility, and are also questioning why they have been unable to view her body.

When Marjorie Eleanor Williams checked into the Harrison Point Isolation facility on September 9, she was asymptomatic and her usual lively self despite a positive COVID-19 test, according to her daughter and primary caregiver, Annette Greaves.

However, 21 days later, the mother of seven and grandmother of 11 was dead and her incensed daughter has charged that authorities have not been forthcoming with answers about what happened with her mother in the days before her death.

Speaking to Barbados TODAY at her St Philip home, Greaves maintained that before her mother passed on September 30, she had unsuccessfully questioned one health practitioner after another to find out what was happening with her case. She believes the drug Remdesivir, which she alleged was administered to her mother against the family’s repeated wishes, may have contributed to her death.

Greaves has therefore lodged an official complaint to the Clinical Risk Management Unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH).

The episode began in early September when Greaves’ son was exposed to COVID-19. She, her son, grandson, fiancé and mother were all tested and placed in quarantine at the Savannah Hotel. Initially, only Williams returned a positive result and she was moved to the isolation facility in St Lucy on September 9.

According to Greaves, her mother was placed in secondary care, rather than tertiary care, because she was immobile as a result of hip and knee issues and nurses would have been better able to help her.

She said she asked to accompany her mother to Harrison Point but the request was denied because she [Greaves] was COVID-19 negative up to that time. It was at this point that Greaves said she requested that her mother not be administered Remdesivir, which is used to treat COVID-19 patients, as she said she had researched it and did not believe it was safe.

She said the condition of a woman who had entered the facility in good spirits quickly went downhill.

“All the time I am calling for my mum they are saying ‘she is stable, she is in a good place’ and all of that. On the sixth day they tell me that her blood sugar and blood levels had risen drastically and she was seriously dehydrated. I want to know how is that when I told them from day one my mum is hypertensive and a diabetic and her medication is in the front part of her bag. The doctor gine then tell the nurse to bring Marjorie Williams’ bag. I said it was a green and black bag. [Their response], ‘oh yes, her medication is here’. So what does that tell you? My mother was not given her medication for six days,” Greaves contended.

“So after that things kept going downhill for her. I’m hearing how dehydrated she was. I said, obviously! My mum is immobile; if the nurses are not helping as they should, she is not going to be able to get down off the bed when she wants to go and get water. My mum drinks six bottles of water every day, and when she is going into her bed at night she takes three bottles of water with her which she drinks throughout the night. So I can imagine her not having the amount of liquid that she is accustomed to, then not having her medication would have compounded it.”

Greaves was confirmed COVID-19 positive after her second test and she and her grandson were sent to Harrison Point. Upon arrival, she requested to stay in the same room as her mother but no one seemed to be able to locate her. She was subsequently told the elderly woman had been discharged, even though no one could tell her into whose care.

The following day, she and her grandson were sent to the isolation centre at Queen’s College without her ascertaining anything about her mother.

Greaves explained that during her seven-day stay there, she made several attempts to contact health officials at Harrison Point and spoke to many at Queen’s College, including Head of Isolation Facilities Dr. Corey Forde, to get answers. However, her efforts bore no fruit.

Greaves disclosed that on the night of a COVID-19 press conference when officials went into Harrison Point and showed the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), she received a call from a Dr Hassell informing her that her mum was at a critical stage and intubated, but she was given no other information and Dr Hassell instead referred her to Dr Forde.

It was on September 30 around 5.48 p.m. that Greaves received a call from a Dr Lovell informing her that her mother’s heart had failed and she had died.

One of the questions the bereaved woman wants answered is why her mother was allowed to go six days without being given her prescribed hypertension medication and why she was instead, reportedly, given Remdesivir.

The family said what made their grief even more pronounced was the fact that Williams died with none of her relatives being able to see or comfort her in her final hours.

Added to that, Williams’ family said they have not been allowed to identify her body or even view it at the funeral home.

Greaves claimed that when she contacted Downes and Wilson Funeral Home to make the funeral arrangements, she was told – though she did not state by whom – that every funeral home has a standard document that is sent to persons handling the arrangements, which is completed online. That file would then be passed on to the relevant authorities at the QEH, then a letter would be sent to the Harrison Point Isolation Facility to get her mother’s documents and all the information would be sent to Lyndhurst Funeral Home which removes the body from the facility.

Greaves told Barbados TODAY she was informed that she would not be allowed to view the body. In fact, she added, she was told the casket would remain closed.

“Pray tell me, why I should give a funeral home ‘x’ amount of money to bury somebody I never see?” the frustrated woman asked.

“I do not know if you have a dog, a cat, two big rocks in this casket that I would have bought for a whole set of money with 20 per cent VAT. All these different things you would have done that you tell me come to 16,000 and some dollars.

“I am burying my mother not to ever see her at no point in time at Harrison Point, at Lyndhurst, or at Downes and Wilson, but I burying somebody in a box that I ain’t seeing. Tell me, does that make sense? I will never give any funeral home my money where I will not be seeing and be able to say ‘yes, that is the woman that took good care of me and was such a sweet and gentle soul all my life’. I cannot see her. I do not know who I am burying in that box,” Greaves maintained.

She has vowed to seek legal advice on the matter because she does not believe the situation is ethical or fair, particularly to a grieving family.

“Why is it that the reporters are allowed to go into primary ICU to see your dying relatives that are in there but you yourself cannot dress up in a hazmat suit too to go in there and see your relatives? . . . . These people are supposed to be gravely ill and you allowing a reporter to come into primary ICU so you can bring through this thing live on national television, but the family members can’t go?. . . Now we cannot even see our loved ones for a final time? What is happening down there is just wrong on so many levels,” Greaves charged.

The World Health Organisation’s Infection Prevention and Control, for the safe management of a dead body in the context of COVID-19 guidelines, recommends to funeral homes and mortuary care that if a family wishes only to view the body and not touch it, they may do so.

Efforts to reach Minister of Health Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Bostic and Dr. Forde for a response to Greaves’ allegations were unsuccessful on Wednesday. (KC)