Clusters spreading in London care homes

CLUSTERS of Covid-19 cases are spreading throughout care homes on the outskirts of London, a public health chief has revealed.

Tens-of-thousands of care home residents died of Covid-19, with recent analysis showing more than 400 deaths each day at the height of the pandemic.

Prof Kevin Fenton, the London director of Public Health England, told the Evening Standard, cases were again spreading. “For some boroughs, where you have high numbers of care homes, especially some of the outer London boroughs, you will tend to see clusters of cases occurring in those care homes,” he said.

Prof Martin Green, the Care England chief executive, said the rise in infection rates was “very worrying”.

It came as care managers branded the UK testing system “a complete farce”.

Anita Astle, the managing director of Wren Hall nursing home in Nottinghamshire, said all 142 of her staff were tested on Sept 4 but only received the results on Sept 11, when it was found that four had tested positive.

“The whole system is a complete farce,” she said. “If you’re asymptomatic, you have to isolate for 10 days, so by the time those four members of staff received their results, they only had to isolate for two days.”

A Department of Health spokesman said: “We are providing tests at an unprecedented scale – 200,000 a day on average over the last week – but there has been significant demand. We are expanding capacity rapidly and bringing in new technology to process tests faster and will continue to work around the clock process results as soon as possible.”