Hancock: Care home toll ‘still far too high’
MATT HANCOCK has conceded there is a “huge amount of work still to do” to reduce Covid-19 death rates in care homes.
The Health Secretary said the number of deaths is “still far too high” after telling MPs the Government is working “resolutely to defeat the coronavirus”.
New figures from the Office for National Statistics show another rise in the weekly number of registered deaths involving Covid-19 occurring in care homes in England and Wales.
The total for the week ending April 24 was 2,794, up from 2,050 in the week ending April 17 – an increase of 36%.
Mr Hancock, responding to an urgent question from shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth, said: “We’ve now built a national testing infrastructure of scale and because we have this extra capacity we’ll be delivering up to 30,000 tests a day to residents and staff in elderly care homes, making sure that symptomatic staff and residents can all be tested.”
He added: “We currently have 3,387 spare critical care beds in the NHS and that is not including the capacity provided by our Nightingale hospitals, including the 460bed Sunderland Nightingale which opened earlier today.”
Mr Hancock went on: “As a result, we are now able to start to restore some NHS services and we’re in a position to be able to place the London Nightingale on standby.
“This is good news because our NHS has not been overwhelmed by this crisis and remains open to those who need care.”
For Labour, Mr Ashworth said: “We are tracking towards having one of the worst death rates in the world, we’ve seen the figures again today, I know he’s said we are through the peak but can the same be said for the care sector considering the number of deaths we’ve seen in the care sector reported today?”
Mr Ashworth also suggested Covid-19 “thrives on inequalities” and a funded strategy is needed to support low-paid, deprived and marginalised communities “including enforcing protections in the workplace when we transition out of this lockdown”.
Mr Hancock replied: “I’m glad that in the numbers released this morning, the data released by the Office for National Statistics and the number of deaths in care homes is slightly lower, but it is still far too high and there is a huge amount of work still to do.
“People who need treatment should get that treatment and we’re opening up and reopening the NHS, including any temporary closures that may have taken place, for instance in A&E that need to reopen.”
He added: “The Government’s agenda in levelling up is unabated, in fact it is strengthened by this crisis.”