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Nursing homes have been “almost forced” to take people who have not had a coronavirus test, according to Sky News.
Official statistics show that deaths in nursing homes accounted for 40.4% of the total number of COVID-19 deaths in England and Wales in the week to May 1.
Sky News has revealed that various councils threatened to withhold funds to help care homes deal with coronavirus outbreak if they did not accept receiving patients with the disease.
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And Nadra Ahmed, president of the National Care Association, said the crisis had been exacerbated by the existing agreement between providers and councils of care homes.
Speaking after a special Sky News report on nursing home deaths, he said: “It is one of those things where you think common sense would prevail, that if someone has not been judged negative, why would we put them on an environment where other vulnerable people are at risk?
“Providers have told us that they were almost forced to take people to nursing homes because they had a contract with the [local] authority to do so.
“I think these are very challenging decisions that have been made by people who have forced the sector to move that way.”
It comes after Sky News reported on the death of Iris Critchle, 64., who continued to work as a housekeeper at the nursing home where she worked in Macclesfield, Cheshire.
Microbiologist Dr. Simon Clarke told Sky News that authorities had indeed been “pouring fuel on the flames” of the coronavirus outbreak.
“We were told this is a disease that will really affect sick and elderly people, and some people with underlying health conditions,” he said.
“It is not a surprise that sick and elderly people are at higher risk.”
“I guess people were sent out of hospitals to make room for what they knew was coming.
“Sending them from untested hospitals to nursing homes and then not giving enough EPP to nursing homes is just pouring fuel on the flames.”
Simon Walls, the clinical leader at the Santa Cecilia nursing home, said the virus likely entered his facility because of an asymptomatic patient discharged from the hospital, then became ill and returned to the hospital, where he died.
“We were unable to obtain evidence to evaluate residents who we think might have had COVID-19,” he said.
“Unfortunately, those people died. We did not know if they died from COVID-19 or from natural causes. But I suspect the number is much higher than what we have documented due to evidence.”
Sky News asked if he wanted to apologize to the families of those who had died in nursing homes because the Governor had not done enough to protect them, Health Secretary Matt Hancock previously insisted that doing so had been a “top priority from the start.”.
“Ensuring that care homes have the support they need has been a top priority, in fact, I can recall that in one of the first coronavirus discussions in January,” he said.
Hancock announced last week that coronavirus testing would now be available to asymptomatic residents and staff in nursing homes, as well as symptomatic patients and staff in NHS hospitals.
