Dementia and COVID-19: The Ones Not to Be Forgotten
Duarte Barros, Flávia Borges‐Machado, Óscar Ribeiro, Joana Carvalho
Abstract
Humankind has been dealing with a devastating colossal pandemic, described as the greatest challenge of the 21st century in health and social care -dementia.Worldwide it is estimated that every 3 seconds someone develops dementia.This syndrome prevalence is not slowing down and already more than 50 million people live with it, a number that is expected to increase to 152 million in 2050. 1 Supporting this data, Alzheimer Europe estimated that almost 10 million people live with dementia in Europe.Portugal is alarmingly one of the most affected countries and will exceed the European trend by doubling its current prevalence to 3.82% of the total population until 2050. 2 Presently, we are facing another pandemic threat due to COVID-19, a highly infectious disease that rapidly spread around the globe.The first 2 cases of COVID-19 in Portugal were confirmed on 2 March 2020.On 12 March, the Portuguese Council of Ministers approved a set of extraordinary measures like closing schools, nurseries, kindergarten, and daycare centers to restrict social contact and group activities.The state of alert was declared on 13 March 2020.Following the exponential increase of cases, the Portuguese government declared the state of emergency and mandatory lockdown from 18 March till 2 May.Therefore, very strict measures of physical-social distancing were adopted to control the outbreak, which in itself represents a physiological and cognitive challenge with significant repercussions on health and wellbeing. 3eople with dementia (PwD) and their relatives' lives were highly impacted by these measures because many group activities and care-related services were canceled and visitors were prohibited in nursing homes for 3 months.Most day-care centers were closed on March 16th for an undetermined period without specific guidelines or recommendations, imposing this population to stay at home without premeditated support care. 4 Despite no official data is available on the prevalence of dementia across the various settings in Portugal, it is estimated