Rapid testing is sorely needed at care homes

sir – My mother lives in a very well managed care home in Cardiff. Recently, seven staff and nine residents tested positive for Covid-19.

All residents are now restricted to their rooms with minimal contact and one resident was hospitalised. My understanding is that the staff who tested positive were all asymptomatic.

As a proportion of my mother’s care community, a very high percentage was infected – higher than the wider community rate at the time. Does this mean that most cases are still in care homes? Shouldn’t we know, so that we can take action?

Covid cases have risen rapidly in Cardiff and the Valleys. Despite the precautions taken by staff when outside the care home, it seems likely that a staff member introduced the virus, since family visits have been restricted and conducted outdoors with two-metre distancing and PPE.

The key to protecting care-home residents is to test care-home workers, ideally before every shift. A lower quality test that gives a rapid, on-site result might work. Does this exist? Kerry Attwell Thomas

Salisbury, Wiltshire

sir – Dr Damian Tominey’s article (“Testing system for care homes a fiasco, putting elderly at risk”, September 30) is an appalling indictment of the government agencies on which he should have been able to rely to protect elderly, frail people at the nursing home he runs.

It reinforces the impression that the pandemic is being mismanaged by incompetent civil servants and bureaucrats, who inhabit a world remote from reality. Where is the sense of urgency? Where is the acknowledgement that people’s lives are at stake?

Clive Green

Bristol