Covid cases were linked to patients moving from hospitals to care homes, Government report admits

Discharging hospital patients back into care homes was an ‘important source' of infection, government experts have admitted, as new figures show that more than half of care homes have had a confirmed case of Covid-19.

A paper by the Care Homes Sub group which was submitted to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) on May 12th, warned that the new disease cases were linked to the connection between care homes and hospitals.

The huge numbers of deaths in care homes is thought to be the reason the government underestimated how many people would die from the virus, with Professor Neil Ferguson recently telling MPs he had assumed residents would be shielded when modelling the pandemic.

A separate report, released in a new tranche of government papers on Thursday showed that Sage believed there would be at most 50,000 UK deaths in the first wave of the pandemic up to September. But that figure was passed at the beginning of June.

The report also predicted a maximum of 2,700 deaths per week at the peak, but there were in fact 6,500 in the second week of April.

The government has been highly criticised for sending untested hospital patients back into care homes between mid-March and mid-April, which seeded the virus into vulnerable communities which until then had been largely protected through shielding.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) released separate data on Friday showing that nearly 20,000 care home residents in England and Wales have died with coronavirus, with the majority dying in their care home.

The figures have prompted clinical negligence lawyers to warn that "critical shortcomings" have led to "many unnecessary deaths".

A separate government survey looking at infections in more than 9,000 care homes in England between May 26 and  June 20 estimates that more than half (56 per cent) of the care homes have had at least one confirmed case of Covid-19.

Some 5,126 care homes responded to the Vivaldi study - a large-scale survey which looked at Covid-19 infections in 9,081 care homes providing care for dementia patients and the elderly in England - and estimates were produced by weighting the actual responses to take account of the care homes which did not respond.

Of these, 20 per cent of residents and seven per cent of staff are estimated to have tested positive for Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, as reported by care home managers.

Responding to the latest data, Victoria Beel, clinical negligence lawyer at Slater and Gordon, said: "The Government's response to tackling Covid-19 in care homes has been slow and involved a number of failings. Initially plans to control the virus overlooked these homes, despite the 400,000 residents being the UK's most vulnerable.

"Failings included Covid-19 positive patients being unsafely discharged into care homes, inadequate PPE and a shortage of testing. Even the reporting of deaths have been questioned.

"These decisions and critical shortcomings led to many unnecessary deaths. A public inquiry is the best way forward to honour the lives lost, provide answers to grieving families and prevent this from happening again."

The new results differ from the latest Public Health England (PHE) statistics, which state that just 43 per cent of care homes in England have had an outbreak, defined as two or more suspected or confirmed cases.

Meanwhile, separate ONS data showed that death certificates for 19,394 residents mentioned "novel coronavirus" between March 2 and June 12.

Covid-19 accounted for 29 per cent of the deaths of care home residents over this period and a fifth of all deaths of care home residents this year.

The latest data includes all care home residents who died with Covid-19 either at their care home or in hospital.

This pushes the overall care home resident death figure 32 per cent higher than the 14,658 deaths in care homes reported by the ONS on Tuesday.

Three-quarters (74.9 per cent) of residents died in their care home, while a quarter (24.8 per cent) died in hospital, the figures show.

Some 65 residents, representing 0.3 per cent of the total, died in a separate location such as a private home or hospice.