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A woman takes a photo of her relative during the confinement in May, when visits were prohibited
Nursing homes in England will receive additional funding of £ 546 million to try to reduce the transmission of the coronavirus during the winter, the government announced.
The money helps pay workers full wages when they self-isolate and ensures that caregivers only work in one residence, reducing the spread of the virus.
The fund was created in May and has been extended until March 2021.
In an interview with The Sun, the prime minister warned that family visits to nursing homes might also need to be restricted.
“I’m afraid it’s incredibly difficult, but we’re going to have to put some restrictions on people (visitors) to go to nursing homes,” Boris Johnson said.
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The funding makes money available to help health workers reduce their use of public transportation and stock up on personal protective equipment, according to Johnson.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the House of Commons that the government would do “everything humanly possible” to protect nursing homes “to be a place of refuge this winter.”
In an earlier statement, he said the additional funding would provide “peace of mind” to many in the social care sector.
It increases total funding for infection control measures in nursing homes in England to more than 1.1 billion pounds, after the sector received 600 million pounds in May.
Each of the delegate nations was allocated funds for nursing homes in May totaling £ 113 million.
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The announcement comes as new coronavirus restrictions are expected to be announced in northeast England, where cases have been on the rise.
Later in the Commons, Labor shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth asked Hancock to ensure that nursing homes “will not face the same shortage” of personal protective equipment (PPE) and expressed concern. for the “enormous damage” caused to residents by restrictions on the family. visits.
The health secretary said the government had a plan to ensure that nursing homes can get PPE, which would be laid out in its Winter Adult Social Care Plan this week.
In July, nursing homes in England were allowed to reopen for family visits, provided local authorities and public health teams said it was safe. There was a similar reopening of homes in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
However, many nursing homes have yet to fully reopen, even with strict rules on visitors or banning them altogether.
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In Edinburgh, families have protested the “cruel” rules of home visiting.
Ministers have also promised that people in nursing homes will be a priority for coronavirus testing, alongside the NHS, amid ongoing problems with the UK testing system.
An increase in demand for coronavirus testing has led to local shortages, with many people reporting problems securing online reservations and were directed to testing sites hundreds of miles from home.
The large Lighthouse Labs, run by the government to analyze test swabs from all the nations of the UK, have struggled to process them all.
Hancock will announce who will be prioritized for testing in the coming days.
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His government colleague, Health Minister Edward Argar, told BBC Radio 4’s Today program that the official guide “will give priority to front-line NHS care workers, teachers and the like.”
“There may be people with symptoms who request a test and have to wait longer because we are prioritizing the key frontline workers we need to keep our NHS and our system of care running,” he said.
There has been a sharp decrease in test response speed in England, the latest Test and Trace figures show, with only a third of people (33%) recovering their results within 24 hours of taking the test. a test, compared to two-thirds last week. .
A total of 18,371 new people tested positive for coronavirus in England in the week ending September 9.
The coronavirus swept through UK nursing homes during the peak of the outbreak, with tens of thousands of deaths.
Nearly 30,000 more nursing home residents in England and Wales died during the coronavirus outbreak than during the same period in 2019, figures from the Office for National Statistics released in July show. But only two-thirds were directly attributable to Covid-19.
According to the figures, there were just over 66,000 deaths of nursing home residents in England and Wales between March 2 and June 12 this year, compared to just under 37,000 deaths last year.
