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Two of the UK’s largest nursing home operators reported declining Covid-19 death rates, raising hopes that the outbreaks have devastated some of the most vulnerable and elderly people eventually may be decreasing.
The number of residents who have recovered from the virus has now overshadowed the number of deaths caused by it in 220 care settings operated by MHA, the world’s largest provider of charitable housing, which on Monday had recorded 359 deaths in total. He said the deaths peaked around April 22 and have gradually decreased since then. Meanwhile, HC-One, the largest commercial operator that has lost 829 residents due to confirmed or suspected Covid-19, said deaths had dropped from a high of 31 per day on April 19 to four on Monday.
A manager at a separate nursing home in Ealing, where 27 residents died in an outbreak in April, told The Guardian that he had not registered new infections for fifteen days.
Positive signs came ahead of the release of official care home death figures on Tuesday through May 1, which are expected to show an increase in the 5,890 deaths recorded in England and Wales through April 24.
The daily number of deaths reported by nursing homes to the regulator of the Quality of Care Commission and published by the Office of National Statistics decreased in the last five days for which data was available. Along with the most up-to-date operator numbers, they offer hope that the peak of the first wave of the virus has passed in many care homes.
But there were warnings that unless tests for care staff and residents are urgently improved, there could be a second spike in deaths, which could coincide with the fall flu season. There have been complaints from households that they cannot access the test kits and the tests that are carried out are not properly processed, rendering them useless. The Amazon-style “Clipper” system promised by the government to send personal protective equipment is still not working nationwide.
A GP in Cheshire said tests performed in a nursing home were simply not collected for processing, while Jess Yipsley, MP for Birmingham Yardley tweeted: “A Birmingham nursing home, 30 tests sent and done. No one came to pick them up, so they went to the trash. No one was tested. “
At Oxford, John Guy, president of the Fairfield Nursing Home Trustees, said: “As of yesterday, we have not yet received swabs for testing at residents’ homes, which we first requested on April 27 when Matt Hancock said home testing was available. “
After Boris Johnson promised in his Sunday night television address that more would be done in the wake of “terrible epidemics” in nursing homes, the government announced Monday that by June 6, every nursing home for Over 65s would have received tests for residents and staff. He said that by the end of this week, the NHS would also provide a named contact to help train home care staff, including infection control, and that each household would be assigned a designated doctor, reflecting concern that care staff, who are without medical training, have struggled to cope with the new virus.
“We need constant vigilance to avoid a second spike,” said Sir David Behan, chief executive of HC-One, adding that “specific and sustained testing” is needed to maintain the lowest levels of death in their homes. “We need to avoid it coinciding with the normal onset of seasonal flu in the fall, which would be a double whammy,” he said.
Limiting the use of agency care staff that could spread the infection and keeping bank staff in shifts in one household helped reduce deaths, along with a reduction in the number of people infected in society at large, he said. .
“We are beginning to see the slowdown in Covid-19 cases and the number of recoveries is now well above that of residents we sadly lost to the virus,” said Sam Monaghan, executive director of MHA. “That does not mean that we can be complacent. The coronavirus threat is still present and we need to make sure that routine testing is fully implemented, not only in places where residents and staff show symptoms, but weekly.”
