Monday, August 03, 2020
Has the government abandoned care homes in England?
The Independent reports that ministers have been accused of being “negligent” towards care home residents and staff, after it emerged that the target of delivering regular coronavirus tests this summer has been dropped.
The paper says that a leaked memo written by the government’s adult social care testing director, Jane Cummings, has revealed that the originally promised timelines for rolling out regular tests had been abandoned:
Weekly testing for staff and 28-day tests for residents was due to begin in England on 6 July for care homes looking after over-65s and those with dementia, with a rollout to all adult social care homes from August.
However, Prof Cummings’s memo suggested that the target for care homes with older people and dementia sufferers had been put back to 7 September. Other adult care homes will only be able to order test kits from 31 August.
A member of the Independent Sage expert group said the delay was "not good enough".
Christina Pagel, director of the Clinical Operational Research Unit at University College London, told the BBC: "We know care homes were absolutely devastated in March and April, when they were one-third of all UK deaths, and we absolutely have responsibility to protect care homes now. And we protect them by testing people and making sure we are not bringing infection into these really vulnerable communities."
From my perspective it seems that the testing regime has been a disaster in all four nations, with targets being regularly missed, no obvious criteria or consistency of purpose, and varying degrees of efficacy.
Early incompetence, which led to indefensible levels of infection (and deaths) in care homes, now appears to being compounded by this failure on testing. Isn't it time all the government's got their act together on this issue.
The paper says that a leaked memo written by the government’s adult social care testing director, Jane Cummings, has revealed that the originally promised timelines for rolling out regular tests had been abandoned:
Weekly testing for staff and 28-day tests for residents was due to begin in England on 6 July for care homes looking after over-65s and those with dementia, with a rollout to all adult social care homes from August.
However, Prof Cummings’s memo suggested that the target for care homes with older people and dementia sufferers had been put back to 7 September. Other adult care homes will only be able to order test kits from 31 August.
A member of the Independent Sage expert group said the delay was "not good enough".
Christina Pagel, director of the Clinical Operational Research Unit at University College London, told the BBC: "We know care homes were absolutely devastated in March and April, when they were one-third of all UK deaths, and we absolutely have responsibility to protect care homes now. And we protect them by testing people and making sure we are not bringing infection into these really vulnerable communities."
From my perspective it seems that the testing regime has been a disaster in all four nations, with targets being regularly missed, no obvious criteria or consistency of purpose, and varying degrees of efficacy.
Early incompetence, which led to indefensible levels of infection (and deaths) in care homes, now appears to being compounded by this failure on testing. Isn't it time all the government's got their act together on this issue.
