Care homes in Wales to install ‘pods’ for visits over Christmas

CARE homes in Wales are to have “pods” installed to allow Christmas visits during December.

Vaughan Gething, the health minister, said the £3 million pilot will see an initial 30 pods put in care settings ahead of the festive period, with 100 due to be installed later for a period of six months.

Mr Gething said the visitor pods would expand capacity within care homes which lack internal visiting space and struggle to accommodate socially distanced visits from outsiders.

He added: “We recognise both the distress and sadness that has been experienced since March, but also the desire from care homes to facilitate visits before and during Christmas as well as throughout the winter.

“The pilot scheme will help us to understand whether visiting pods are an effective and practical way of supporting meaningful visits.

“We will use this to determine whether we should consider commissioning a bespoke Wales-based solution in future if the course of the pandemic means this is required.”

The Welsh Government has come under fire for its handling of care homes during the pandemic, and last week it was revealed 53 people were discharged from hospital into care homes in Wales within 15 days of them testing positive between March 1 and May 31.

In July, the Welsh Parliament’s health committee said care homes were “badly let down” by the Welsh Government at the start of the crisis, and ministers had been too slow to launch a testing regime for both staff and residents.

Mark Drakeford, the First Minister, said at Friday’s Covid-19 press briefing that the rules around care homes were “much stronger now than they were back in the spring”, and the Government had “a much better understanding of the way the virus spreads”.

Mr Drakeford also said care home residents and staff were “very much part” of discussions about which groups would have use of new rapid lateral flow tests which can detect the virus in asymptomatic people.