Care homes became like 'zoos' during the pandemic with residents telling their families they wished they had died before Covid, an inquiry has been told.
Scots living in care were 'treated like animals' during the crisis, the Scottish Covid-19 Inquiry heard, as people watched their parents die through the windows as visits were restricted.
The toll of not seeing loved ones saw residents' mental states decline, with one woman revealing her mother 'tried to take her own life' in a nursing home as isolation left her in a 'such deep depression that she wanted to be dead'.
The revelations come as the inquiry published the latest volume of Let's Be Heard, in which thousands of Scots shared their experiences of the pandemic. Some of the most harrowing parts of the report include the comments of healthcare and care home workers who were left scarred by what they saw as they tried to save lives.
One Glasgow care home worker told the inquiry: 'Residents were treated like animals. No visitors. Not allowed out, didn't understand. Then it was visits at windows. A zoo, that's what it was like.'
Another carer reported risking their job to set up a video call with a dying resident against managers' wishes who opposed the call as the resident looked unwell.
Some care home residents said they wished they had died before Covid
Visiting restrictions had huge impacts on families. One South Lanarkshire woman, who was unable to visit her mother in care for seven months, said it was 'barbaric to put the elderly though this'.
Some of those in care did not even understand why loved ones stopped visiting, with the inquiry revealing that information about the pandemic was kept from residents as part of care home policies.
Any contact was 'akin to a prison visit' according to one care home worker. One woman from Glasgow reported the 'trauma' of seeing her dad's hurt face at the window, 'not allowed to be in the same room as him, to touch or hold him, to give him the comfort he desperately needed'.
One deaf 100-year-old woman told her family, the inquiry said, that 'she wished she had died before Covid' after spending weeks in 'solitary confinement', unable to communicate through masks or by phone.
A care home worker said: 'Relatives watched loved ones fade not by Covid but by no contact with loved ones.'
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