Daily Mail

Vow to give care home residents jab by SUNDAY

But NHS chiefs admit it may take week longer

- By Vanessa Allen and Kamal Sultan

MOST care home residents will be vaccinated by Sunday under an ambitious NHS target set amid fears the rollout is taking too long.

NHS England has announced that residents are expected to be vaccinated by the end of this week, or by January 24 ‘at the latest’.

Scientists said yesterday that one life is saved for roughly every 25 residents vaccinated. But managers at some homes have not yet been contacted to arrange vaccinatio­ns for their vulnerable residents and staff, despite Government promises that they were its top priority.

Professor Wei Shen Lim, chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccinatio­n and Immunisati­on (JCVI), told MPs: ‘The estimates are that we have to vaccinate only about 250 people aged over 80 to save one life. We only need to vaccinate somewhere between 25 to 45 care home residents to save one life.’

The National Care Associatio­n (NCA) said some homes had still not received any informatio­n about when they could expect the vaccine.

The NHS has also asked homes to start accepting Covid patients from hospitals, prompting fears of a return to the crisis in care homes seen in the first wave of the virus last year.

Outbreaks of coronaviru­s have risen sharply in homes, which are struggling to cope with staff shortages. Death rates have also risen.

The NCA, which represents independen­t care providers, said its members were ‘extremely anxious’ about delays in vaccinatio­ns.

Chairwoman Nadra Ahmed said she received five or six ‘heartbreak­ing’ emails a day from homes that had yet to be contacted. She said

‘Rollout is quite a bit behind’

she was surprised by how many providers had reported they had not received the jabs and told the BBC she believed the rollout in care homes was ‘quite a bit behind’.

NHS England has told GPs that it expects all care home residents and staff to be vaccinated by January 24, with most receiving the jab by the end of this week.

Operators and residents’ families have expressed fears over homes being asked to take Covid patients from hospitals.

There were more than 19,000 coronaviru­s-related deaths of care home residents between March and June, and the outbreaks were blamed on hospitals dischargin­g patients into homes without routine virus testing.

The NHS has now asked some homes to accept Covid-positive patients directly from hospitals, provided they have been in isolation for 14 days and have shown no new symptoms, according to the Guardian newspaper. Patients had previously been sent only to care homes where it was judged that infection spread could be limited.

Care provider groups said many members had decided not to take part in the scheme because of safety fears or issues with insurance. Professor Martin Green, chief executive of Care England, said homes must take their own decisions and that hospitals should not put them under ‘undue pressure’.

The NHS is considerin­g a ‘backup plan’ to move some non-Covid patients into hotels to ease pressure on hospitals, Health Secretary Matt Hancock confirmed yesterday. He said it would be done only if appropriat­e for the patient to free up beds. London Hotel Group, which owns the Best Western chain, has already taken Covid patients from King’s College Hospital. It said it is in talks with 20 trusts and could provide 5,000 beds.

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