Nearly 20,000 hospital patients – most of whom hadn’t been tested for coronavirus – were discharged into care homes during the first weeks of lockdown, it emerged yesterday.
Up until April 16, government guidelines said patients should be released into care homes – even if they had tested positive for Covid-19.
Official public health guidance issued on February 25 stated: ‘It remains very unlikely that people receiving care in a care home or the community will become infected.’
This ‘disastrous’ policy has been blamed for the catastrophic spread of the virus in care homes, killing nearly 15,000 elderly and vulnerable residents.
Caroline Abrahams (pictured), charity director at Age UK, said: ‘If as a country we had got this right from the start, it seems certain that many older people’s lives would have been saved’
NHS England data yesterday revealed that 19,124 people were admitted to care homes from hospitals in the 25-day period between lockdown being announced on March 23 and April 16.
More than 23,000 patients had been discharged into care homes in the first three weeks of March, as the epidemic took hold in Britain.
The figures show that the number of people discharged from hospitals into care homes during the height of the outbreak had fallen to about two thirds of the level over the same period last year.
But charities say it was a failure to allow a single person to be discharged into care homes without being tested.
Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, said: ‘This awful statistic shows how devastating the consequences have been in care homes from the failure to get enough tests for the virus organised quickly enough.
Fiona Carragher (pictured), of the Alzheimer’s Society, said: ‘‘Serious questions need to be asked as to how many of the 20,000 discharged did have coronavirus, and why all people weren’t tested before discharge. There must be accountability for the lives lost’
‘If as a country we had got this right from the start, it seems certain that many older people’s lives would have been saved. As it was, care homes were left playing Russian roulette when it came to taking in patients being discharged from hospitals.
‘We’ve been playing catch-up ever since and the truth is that there still isn’t enough testing in care homes, all these weeks on.
‘Sorting this out still needs to be an urgent priority.’
Fiona Carragher, of the Alzheimer’s Society, said: ‘These figures are a terrifying confirmation of the extent people with dementia were forgotten at the start of this crisis. It’s clear that the Government did next to nothing in the first weeks of the pandemic to keep them safe from infection.
‘Serious questions need to be asked as to how many of the 20,000 discharged did have coronavirus, and why all people weren’t tested before discharge. There must be accountability for the lives lost.
A survey revealed that one third of homes have taken hospital patients with the virus, despite fewer than half being able to properly isolate them
‘Despite repeatedly raising our concerns with the Government, we didn’t see a plan until after Easter for keeping care homes safe and, in the weeks after promises were made to provide PPE, 43 per cent of homes told us they still didn’t have enough.’ Last month, the Daily Mail revealed that the Care Quality Commission is investigating several cases of hospitals returning people to care homes despite suspecting – or even knowing – they were infected.
A survey revealed that one third of homes have taken hospital patients with the virus, despite fewer than half being able to properly isolate them. At the St Nicholas home in Bootle, Liverpool, 12 residents died after Aintree Hospital discharged two patients to it without testing them for coronavirus.
The patients were discharged into the home’s empty beds between March 30 and April 4, and soon after staff and other residents began displaying symptoms. Residents died almost every day over two weeks after the virus ripped through the home.
The NHS data published yesterday revealed that by mid-April the number of people being discharged into care homes had fallen by about 700 a day.
A spokesman for the NHS said: ‘This new data reinforces what hospitals have already made clear: clinicians have pulled out all the stops to do the right thing for their individual patients, and to get people the right care and support where and when they need it.’