Care homes Covid hell ‘like being lost at sea with no sight of land’

Minister would be asked to apologise for suggesting “too many care homes didn’t follow procedures”.

Now, in late March, as Dominic Cummings drove 250 miles to Durham with his wife and child, Sherdley Court got the phone call they had dreaded.

A long-term resident, in hospital for a non-Covid-19 related procedure and showing no symptoms, had tested positive on admission. “He deteriorated and passed away,” Hayley says. “We were all devastated. He was with us 11 years and was loved by everyone.”

Two weeks later, Hayley went to bed unwell. “When I awoke my temperature was 39C – my fever didn’t break for another three weeks, hitting ng 42C.” After two weeks barely ely waking, she worked from m home “looking like a corpse on Zoom”, before getting ng back to work a month later – only to be rushed to hospital. spital.

On April 6, one day af ter t e r

Johnson was as

PROMISE But Hayley has little faith in Hancock taken into intensive care, 84-year-old Stan Chantler, another popular resident, developed breathing problems. “But we had no capacity to test him,” Hayley says.

A retired accountant who had developed Alzheimer’s, Stan was admitted to hospital, diagnosed with Covid-19, and died alone on April 10. Staff were distraught. “You feel an enormous sense of guilt that somehow, despite all your precautions, this awful virus still managed to find its way into your service,” Hayley says. The next day, the Queen gave her Easter message about “light overcoming darkness”. She said: “As dark as death can be – particularly for those suffering with grief – light and life are greater.”

The fol lowing week, the PM was discharged from hospital, and virus deaths hit 10,000.

But those in care homes were sti l l not being counted. Stan’s daughter Paula, 56, had been unable to be with him as she was shielding with MS and caring for her mum. “When they rang me, it was five to midnight and very short,” she says. “It was brutal. “The call lasted 26 seconds. They just said, ‘your dad, he’s gone’ and that was it. I was lost for words. I had to let the home know straight away.

“It was very sad. The cremation was at 8am and no one was there. I told friends and family to think of him at that time. It was all we could do. When I got the ashes back that was the first contact I’d had with him since Covid.”

Hayley remembers Stan as a huge personality. “Every evening, he’d go around the building checking all the doors and windows were locked securely as he’d done in his job,” she says. “Stan had a fabulous, Scouse sense of humour and would take the mickey out of staff on a daily basis.”

In all, the home lost “three fabulous residents” to Covid-19. “Several other residents also got the virus, but we were able to nurse them to recovery. Three of our staff team, including myself, contracted it and recovered.”

During this time, she says the Government, promoting “CARE” badges, added insult to injury. “What social care staff actually needed was effective PPE and appropriate guidance,” she says.

FAILED

This week Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies expert John Edmunds said ministers “failed” to act on “early” advice to protect care home residents from coronavirus.

Until April 15, the Government’s advice to hospitals was that negative tests were not needed before transfers or admissions into care homes. That advice led to over a month during which thousands of hospital patients with Covid-19 symptoms may have been discharged to care homes.

Meanwhile, it took until April 28 for deaths in care homes even to be included in the daily national toll of coronavirus mortalities. Now Matt Hancock, who once promised a “ring of steel”, says care homes will be “a place of sanctuary this winter” – yesterday announcing £546million extra money to an Infection Control Fund.

Back in Merseyside, now among the worst hit regions with cases rising by 225%, Hayley feels herself brace again.

She is also worried the Prime Minister has warned care home visits may soon be “restricted” again. Even though it may be the right thing to do, “it will be massively detrimental to the mental health of many residents”.

She adds: “I’m concerned about the possibility of people becoming co-infected with Covid as well as the

ABANDONED Sherdley Court home

flu virus. We are physically prepared for a second wave in that we have PPE, policies and guidance, and we can test for the virus so long as Government doesn’t run out of kits again

“But as staff on the front line, we are emotionally exhausted and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.

“Our precious NHS is an incredible institution, but I think people tend to forget it’s the tip of the iceberg in a functioning society. Social care is the larger, hidden part of the iceberg.”

Over 20,000 people in care homes died in the first wave, around one third of all coronavirus deaths.

It was a Tory MP, Theresa Villiers, who told Parliament: “When an inquiry takes place into the Covid pandemic, I fear that its most painful conclusions will relate to what has happened in care homes.”

As Britain steers once more into stormy waters, the nation’s care homes fear that far from being a place of sanctuary, they are being once again set adrift, losing sight of land once more.