The Health Ministry has ordered to establish a commission of inquiry after an elderly woman who died from coronavirus was buried under a wrong name, without her family being informed.
According to preliminary findings, last month the woman had been transferred from the "Neot Avi" nursing home in the city of Ashkelon due to a COVID-19 outbreak there, to Mishkanot Vatikim Geriatric Center in Bnei Brak - where she later passed away.
Mishkanot Vatikim Geriatric Center, however, had mistakenly assumed the woman had no family and once she passed away, she was buried under a different name. They claimed they did not receive accurate information from the facility in Ashkelon.
Neot Avi for their part said the transfer of residents who have tested positive for COVID to the Bnei Brak center was in accordance with the the Health Minstry directives. They added that all residents were wearing bracelets with their names and other medical information on them.
In preparation for Rosh Hashanah, "Neot Avi" sent a holiday gift to all their residents and asked to take pictures of them receiving them. On the image they noticed a completely different resident was pictured with the name tag of the woman, who at that point was no longer alive.
"We were shocked and horrifed to see the tenant who passed away according to the report from Vatikim, was pictured with the gift," said the nursing home in a statement.
Neot Avi said that as soon as they found out about the incident, they informed the Health Ministry and the head of the Bnei Brak center, demandeding that an investigation into the event be opened.
"We also sent our head nurse to see what's going on with other residents at Vatikim, and we found out more of them had their name bracelets missing".
The Ministry of Health said in response: "A committee will examine this serious and unfortunate case, in which an identification error was made during the burial of an elderly woman who died of COVID."
The ministry also said their representatives met with her family in order to take care of the issue, and while they are investigating what went wrong, they will keep assisting the grieving relatives as long as necessary.