15 DIED IN ‘DUMPING GROUND’
THE devastation in care homes during the first wave was felt by the families of residents at Temple Court – a site that was eventually ordered to close.
The virus ripped through the privately run home in Kettering, Northamptonshire, leading to the deaths of 15 residents in six weeks.
It was allegedly used as a ‘dumping ground’ for suspected recovering Covid patients.
The deaths came after untested patients were sent home from local hospitals in an effort to free up beds.
Of the 15 coronavirus-related deaths from the first admission on March 19 – when the home was said to be Covidfree – to May 1, four residents had coronavirus recorded on their death certificates.
At least another seven are suspected to have died with the virus.
The facility had 30 beds, meaning Covid is suspected to have played a part in the deaths of half its residents.
As the outbreak spread, all 12 full-time staff went off sick with symptoms of Covid-19, leaving the home reliant on agency staff. Care standards are then said to have declined with the change of staff.
One of those who died after the outbreak was widower Mikhail Waskiw, 91, who came to Britain as a Ukrainian war refugee in the 1940s.
Mr Waskiw, who died in April, was admitted to the home for three weeks of respite care at the end of February following a hip operation.
His son Raymond, 62, said residents at the home were ‘like lambs to the slaughter’. He said: ‘My father was more or less pushed there by social services. Before we could get him out, the lockdown happened. He had been in reasonably good health apart from his hip operation, but he spent his last three weeks unable to see visitors. It is a scandal that potential Covid-19 patients were just sent into care homes. They, and the residents already there like my father, were like lambs to the slaughter.’
Northamptonshire Police launched an investigation into the home in June after it was ordered to close. It was rated ‘inadequate’ by the Care Quality Commission watchdog in the same month.