VIRUS TESTS FOR ALL IN CARE HOMES
All staff and residents can get tested from this week in move ‘to bring further reassurance’
CORONAVIRUS testing will be extended to all care home residents and staff in Wales. Health Minister Vaughan Gething announced that from this week onward every care home in Wales would have access to testing.
The move comes following the latest scientific evidence, according to a statement from the Government.
Care homes which have not reported an outbreak or any cases of coronavirus will be able to use an online portal to order testing kits for residents and staff.
Test kits will be provided for the whole care home, this includes all residents and staff.
Health Minister Vaughan Gething said: “How we tackle coronavirus continually changes as we receive more emerging evidence and scientific advice.
“We have been very clear in our approach that our strategy is about reducing harm first and we will adapt policies in order to do this.
“Today is a step change in how we will be testing in care homes, adapting our policy so that every resident and member of staff can be tested for coronavirus.
“I hope this brings further reassurance to those living and working in care homes and their families.”
The new policy, which will be
“rolled out shortly”, will be in an addition to the existing testing arrangements that test:
All residents and staff of care homes with ongoing cases prior to May;
All residents and staff members of care homes reporting an outbreak;
All residents and staff in the larger care homes, with more than 50 beds;
All individuals being discharged from hospital to live in care homes regardless of whether or not they were admitted to hospital with Covid-19;
All people who are being transferred between care homes and for new admissions from the community.
Testing in Wales had been more restrictive than in England, where all care home residents and staff have been eligible for testing regardless of symptoms since the end of April.
First Minister Mark Drakeford said at the time there was not a “clinical value” in testing everyone where no one was displaying symptoms.
The Office of National Statistics said there were 532 deaths up to May 1 involving Covid-19 among care home residents in Wales – the lowest regional total across England and Wales.
Plaid’s Delyth Jewell said: “This is a long-awaited recognition of what we have consistently argued for.
“The tragic cases of Covid-19 in care homes and its prevalence within them should have been a wake-up call for the Welsh Government that testing everyone was a necessary lifesaving step.
“The refusal to do so up to now should be the subject of examination in the future inquiry.
“While it is a welcome change of approach, ministers must now publish the advice which informed the previous policy of not testing in every care home and how it has now changed.”
Conservative Shadow Minister for Social Care, Janet Finch-Saunders, said: “Care homes have some of society’s most vulnerable and for that reason I have been urging the Welsh Government for weeks to extend Coronavirus testing to cover all care home residents and staff.
“As I said at the time, expanding the testing in care homes can reduce the spread of Covid-19 among our most vulnerable and incredible staff.
“It is about time that my calls have been answered by the Welsh Government, but it is shameful that the expansion could not have been implemented sooner given that capacity in testing is increasing.”
Meanwhile, a further 18 people have died after testing positive for coronavirus in Wales, taking the total number of deaths there to 1,191, health officials said.
Public Health Wales said a further 183 people had tested positive for Covid-19, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 12,142.
Dr Chris Williams, incident director for the novel coronavirus (Covid19) outbreak response at Public Health Wales, said: “We have been working hard to increase our testing capacity, and as of Monday, May 11, our capacity was at 5,330 tests a day in Wales.
“We know there is more to do as demand increases, and we will continue to ramp up this capacity.
“Although we appear to have passed the peak of new cases in Wales, novel coronavirus (Covid-19) is still circulating in every part of the country.
“The single most important action we can all take in fighting the virus is to stay at home, and we thank each and every person across Wales for doing their bit to help slow the spread of the virus.”