Care Home Story

I think that the Reuters calculation of 20,000 deaths in UK care homes associated with the Covid-19 pandemic is likely to be close to actuality (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-carehomes-idUSKBN22O2MV). There seems to have been a collective lack of appreciation of the extreme vulnerability of care homes in early planning. This was evidenced by failures to a)  recognise the difficulties of isolating people with symptoms (from visitors and each other) in such establishments; b)  supply needed personal protective equipment to care workers and c) direct some of the necessary testing to people living and working there. I am not convinced that government advice was in any sense 'timely'. I can only think that the  people directing policy were so panicked about the potential 'overwhelming' of the NHS, that they lost sight of this other sector (in spite of knowing that the elderly with underlaying conditions were particularly vulnerable to the virus). The immediate response to the pandemic should have included doing everything to convert care homes into safe 'islands' where the virus was excluded. In contrast, you had the other extreme of elderly patients with the viral infection in NHS beds reportedly being transferred to care homes to 'free up the NHS'.