CARNAGE IN CARE HOMES

GPs refuse to visit ++ Staff ‘used as cannon fodder’ ++ No tests available... even at site where 16 residents died

BRITAIN’S biggest care providers have been denied coronavirus tests even as the disease has ravaged some of their homes, it emerged last night.

Three major care home firms told the Mail no staff or residents had been tested despite a spate of deaths from suspected outbreaks.

One boss said it was ‘almost impossible’ to follow official advice and isolate sufferers without knowing who was ill.

There have been at least 40 virusrelated deaths in UK care homes, but the lack of testing means experts can’t know the true scale of the crisis.

One worker said staff feared catching the virus and passing it to their families or those they look after. She added: ‘None of us has been tested. We have very little access to protective equipment. We are like cannon fodder... being made to risk our lives and the lives of our loved ones for £8.37 an hour.’

One group boss said GPs had stopped visiting care homes, adding: ‘You just feel completely abandoned.’

Government guidance published last week said it would ‘aim to offer more comprehensive testing’ to the sector when ‘capacity increases’. But some big care firms have not had a single test.

FSHC runs more than 200 homes, but has had no tests for residents or staff, with none at one home, Burlington House in Glasgow, where 16 residents died in a suspected outbreak in a week. Half its 13,000 staff are self-isolating. Two have tested positive in hospital.

MHA, with 222 sites, has lost nine residents to Covid-19. None of its 6,000 residents or 8,000 staff have been tested, and more than one in ten of its staff are self-isolating.

Colten Care, which has 21 nursing homes in Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire and Sussex, has had three residents admitted to hospital for other health reasons. While in hospital, however, they tested positive for Covid-19 and died, although their deaths are not thought to have been related to the virus.

The group still has no access to testing for staff or residents.

Staff at Shedfield Lodge Residential Care Home in Southampton are living in caravans to protect their families after a resident died from coronavirus. They haven’t been tested.

The UK’s largest care home group, HC-One, said no staff at its 320 homes had been tested, as did Bupa Care Homes, which operates over 120 sites.

Government guidance also states that if there is an outbreak in a home, a maximum of five residents can be tested.

Rachel Beckett, of the Wellburn group of 14 homes across the North East, said: ‘The guidance has been a disgrace.’

Professor Martin Marshall, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said doctors were still visiting patients in care homes where ‘necessary’, adding that it might be done by telephone or video ‘to protect residents and staff, as well as ourselves and our other patients’.

Gavin Edwards, of the union Unison, said infected homes were ‘the canaries in the mine’.

But Dr Jenny Harries, deputy chief medical officer for England, said last night that testing during outbreaks at care homes was ‘happening now’. Latest coronavirus video news, views and expert advice at mailplus.co.uk/coronavirus

HOW many elderly people in nursing homes have died as a result of Covid-19 since this crisis began?

The heart-breaking answer to this question is that no one knows. And worse still, no real attempt is being made to find out.

With Government efforts and resources understandably focused on protecting the NHS, care home residents have largely been forsaken.

The result of this neglect was starkly illustrated at a home in Scotland where 13 residents died from suspected coronavirus in a single week – probably infected by their unwitting and overworked carers. As the Hove MP Peter Kyle said so powerfully in this paper on Saturday: ‘Unseen, unreported and too often alone, our elderly are dying – killed by the system that is meant to keep them safe.’ Carers are performing with nearsuperhuman dedication but without a fraction of the help given to NHS workers.

Protective equipment is desperately inadequate, there is no testing of staff unless they are hospitalised (by which time it’s too late) and availability of hospital beds for even the sickest residents is shamingly rare.

If we don’t wake up to this unfolding tragedy, many of our care homes will rapidly become houses of death, as has been seen in other parts of Europe. Indeed, it may already be happening.

True, the people at risk here are old, and some are unsound of body or mind.

But in a civilised society, that should be a reason to help and nurture them – not merely shrug our shoulders and abandon them to their fate.