A 94-year-old woman in a retirement housing complex was given a “fun” COVID-19 puzzle, asking her to find words including “fear”, “hospital”, “acute care”, “ventilator”, “pains”, and “pneumonia”.

Accent Housing sent the word search to more than 50 residents at its Vyner House warden-controlled flats in York, as well as two other unidentified locations.

The company apologised after receiving a complaint from the elderly daughter’s resident.

The daughter, who did not want to be named, told York’s The Press newspaper: “We were so horrified we didn’t know where to turn.”

The single page sheet given to her mother, headlined “Just for fun – COVID-19 Word Search”, contained 56 hidden words, ranging from “cough” and “vaccine”, to “bats” and “ICU”.

“One of the clues just says ‘six feet’ and I don’t know if that means six feet under,” said the resident’s daughter.

“What were they thinking, giving this to elderly people who have been isolating in varying degrees for the last seven months?”

Accent Housing, which has 20,000 homes across England, advertises on its website a “promise to deliver the best possible customer experience.”

In a statement they admitted the puzzle had been sent to residents in three of its independent living schemes.

“This was an unfortunate mistake which was not meant to cause any upset to our residents, but we appreciate it has and we are apologising to them,” the statement said.

“We recognise this word search was inappropriate and through some additional training we will make sure nothing like this is ever circulated again.”

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