Loved ones have many questions about nurse's role in Covid-19 patient deaths

The news that nurse Theodoor V. allegedly caused the death of 20 coronavirus patients in the Wilhelmina Hospital in Assen has turned the lives of the victims' loved ones upside down, victim lawyer Sebas Diekstra told NOS. He is representing four families of the nurse’s possible victims. “They have so many questions at the moment, and the uncertainty about how their loved ones died is enormous.”

On Thursday, the Public Prosecution Service (OM) said that V. told caregivers at a healthcare center in Drenthe that he prematurely ended the lives of 20 patients at the Assen hospital during the pandemic. “The suspect allegedly performed medical procedures on patients who, in his view, were terminal and suffering, without instructions from a doctor,” the OM said. A court remanded the 30-year-old former nurse into custody for another 30 days.

A widow, who asked to remain anonymous, told NOS that she was just picking her life up again three years after her husband’s death when she got the call from the police saying that the suspect may have killed him. For three years, she thought her husband had died of Covid-19.

“When she told me, I thought: can you say it again, because I don’t understand exactly what you’re saying,” the widow said about her call with the detective. “It was so unreal. I didn’t know what to do at all. What do you do in a situation like that? I don’t know anyone who has been through something like this.”

She feels like she has to start the grieving process all over again. “When my husband died, I thought: I’m in a horror movie. But then I knew the script. Now you have no idea what to do.”

Her husband was in the Wilhelmina Hospital in Assen for over a week before his death in April 2020. She has no memories of the suspect. “It was a kind of science fiction event. Thermometers on your head, face masks, everything was new. The hospital staff were blue aprons and face masks to me.”

This revelation has left her physically and emotionally exhausted. “I sleep a little at night because I’m so tired. I’m empty.”