Care homes set to allow extra visitor

CARE home residents will be reunited with more loved ones in a major easing of restrictions from next Monday.

Lockdown rules will be relaxed so they can have two regular visitors instead of the current one.

Residents will be able to meet two nominated relatives or friends indoors and hold hands but the guests will have to wear PPE and be tested in advance.

Babies and very young children will also be able to join for the first time without being counted as one of the visitors. It means some grandparents and great-grandparents will be able to meet the newest members of their families for the first time.

Care minister Helen Whately said: ‘We want to go further… and our aim is to make visiting to care homes as normal as possible by the summer.’

The Daily Mail has been campaigning for an end to cruel visiting bans that have seen some residents separated from loved ones for longer than a year. New guidance came into force on March 8 stating all residents should be allowed indoor visits with one designated relative or friend.

But campaigners have warned there has been a cruel lottery with some care home bosses still refusing to let visits take place.

Boris Johnson said last night: ‘Reuniting family and friends has been a priority each time restrictions have eased and the next step will be no different. I’m particularly pleased to allow residents to have more visitors.’

Guidance on the new arrangements will be published on Monday before it comes into effect as part of the next stage of lockdown easing on April 12.

A care home resident with two children will now be able to have both to visit indoors – either together or separately – rather than just picking one.

However, they will have to stick to the same two nominated visitors.

Existing rules allowing extra visitors outdoors or behind a screen will remain in place.

Fiona Carragher, of the Alzheimer’s Society, said: ‘Visits are vital to care home residents with dementia, who have been isolated from their loved ones… and as a result experienced a devastating increase in their symptoms over the past year.’

■ Almost one in four care home staff have not been vaccinated, it emerged yesterday.

Just 78 per cent of staff in homes have received their first dose, compared with almost 94 per cent of eligible residents, officials figures showed.

THERE can’t be many causes for which Jeremy Corbyn and Sir Iain Duncan Smith would stand shoulder to shoulder. But the Government has managed to create one.

The unlikely pair are among 72 MPs (41 of them Tory) horrified that British citizens may soon have to show official documentation before being allowed into a pub, cinema or football match.

This is, of course, the contentious ‘vaccine passport’ scheme. The hospitality industry doesn’t want it. Civil liberties groups are raging over it. And when its complexity and blatantly discriminatory nature are fully realised, the rebellion is sure to grow.

It must have sounded a good idea in the focus groups. A way of getting hospitality venues back to ‘normal’ without the need for social distancing, kick- starting the entertainment industry and coaxing people into aeroplanes again.

But it’s unravelling before it’s even begun, and Boris Johnson’s offer yesterday to time- limit the measure smacks of desperation to cool the simmering dissent.

These passports are misguided on so many levels. First, what form will they take? We are led to believe there will be a phone app holding details of your vaccination and antibody status. But given the lamentable record of the test and trace app, this hardly inspires confidence.

Also, what of those who aren’t comfortable with mobile apps? Do they get some sort of card? If so, how would it be updated?

And how long would it be valid? If a variant emerges that appears resistant to the vaccine you’ve been given, is your passport suspended?

What happens to those who can’t have the jabs for medical reasons, or refuse them, or are too young to need them? Must they be excluded from public life?

The biggest question of all, however, is: Who moved the goalposts? We were told that by June 21 we would be completely free again, not stuck in some ghastly hobbled compromise.

The vaccination rollout has exceeded all expectations. So why should our return to liberty be conditional on what amount to Government pass laws?

It’s one thing for individual businesses to demand proof of vaccination. Airlines in particular may be forced to do so when flying to foreign countries. For the state to insist on it as a matter of routine feels sinister and overbearing.

By any measure the vaccines are spectacularly successful. Mr Johnson should now have the courage to let them do their work. Economically and socially this country is gasping for breath. For pity’s sake, turn on the oxygen.