Care home crisis

It is time the care home coronavirus crisis was put into the correct context.

The huge proliferation of care homes, residential homes and sheltered housing is mainly a result of UK government decisions in the 1970s to take old age care out of the National Health Service. Most of the sector now is owned by multimillionaires (many of them with huge cash deposits offshore) and huge prosperous companies.

The workers in these facilities, however, see little real benefit from the huge costs the residents pay, and if they are inadequately provided with the resources to do their jobs properly or inadequately provided with protection the immediate responsibility to provide such lies with the proprietors.

It is obvious to all that this sector will inevitably see the highest number of fatalities of this pandemic but we see a UK government (which is suspected of trying to conceal the number of deaths in this sector) and the Scottish Government which is honestly reporting them both being attacked for failings in this area over which they have less than adequate control.

This is not the time to play politics, but surely when we have got out of this crisis it will be time to look seriously again at how we provide old age care. DAVE MCEWAN HILL

Sandbank, Argyll

My wife is in a care home in Alloa, where she is looked after very well. Relatives of residents have been informed that there are a couple of cases of Covid-19 in the home. Unfortunately, government guidelines have not yet changed to allow all residents to be tested so those with a positive test can be kept separate from residents who test negative.

This situation puts further strain on staff and families as well as allowing coronavirus to spread further to residents and staff, causing more avoidable illness and deaths.

The emergency situation in care homes has been becoming evident for weeks now. Surely the early examples of what happened in the closed environment of cruise ships in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic was enough of a warning.

IAN GORDON Hill Street, Tillicoultry