Covid-19 and care homes

Even in January this year, it was known that the coronavirus was most likely to kill the elderly more than any other segment of the population. So what did our government do when the crisis hit these shores? In order to free up NHS beds, it shipped thousands of elderly patients out to care homes: an action which is retrospect was not needed, given our hospitals were never filled to capacity, let alone the pop-up Nightingale hospital.

Whilst the best possible treatment was being given to those in hospitals suffering from the disease, care home residents were not even being tested.

Was it therefore any surprise to find, that once the Government finally got round to publishing figures of deaths, both in hospitals and care homes, it showed that nearly half the deaths were in care homes. And this was when our Health Secretary, Matt Hancock insisted on 15 May, that ‘ministers have tried to throw a protective ring around care homes right from the start of the outbreak’. Like not ensuring they were adequately supplied with personal protective equipment, and not supplying them with testing kits?

What this does is highlight, as if we did not know in this area already, with so many care homes in our midst, all governments’ neglect of the care sector. Care homes lose the fight every time when competing for funds with the NHS and will lose the ability to staff their premises properly once Home Secretary, Priti Patel’s new immigration policy kicks in post Brexit.

We have a responsibility to our older generation to treat them in a civilised fashion, and to do it we must as a nation be prepared to pay more, in both national and local taxation.

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