Care homes and CV

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Docb

Docb

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I've seen the strategy of herd immunity + "cocooning" for the vulnerable, which was pretty clearly IMO the initial UK strategy, described as being like setting up no-pee zones in public swimming pools and letting people pee eveywhere else.

In other words, really stupid & doomed even if the execution had been any good.

One of the clusters here in Oz has been at an aged care home where one of the caregivers went to work while pre-symptomatic but infectious. The contact tracers quickly found her while doing their thing and she immediately self-isolated, but the damage had been done. So far there have been 70 cases detected and 17 deaths at the place. The caregiver did everything she was supposed to, but imagine how the poor woman must feel ...
 
The thing niggling me is that at the "briefings" I am sure that it has been said that the peak of deaths in the care homes has passed but I cannot remember seeing any data to support that assertion. A neat trick was played. Early death data only showed hospital deaths. When it became clear that there was a problem in care homes, the care home data was merged into the NHS data and so lost its transparency. I can't help but think, more smoke and mirrors.
 
I’m not going to read the link because I have a dear relative in a nursing home and I’m worried enough already. But I think all carers should have PPE. I also think it’s an absolute disgrace that hospitals were discharging elderly patients into Care Homes before they’d got the results of their Covid 19 test.

As someone said in real life, it’s easy to write people off as ‘old’ and ‘had a good life’ - until you’re that age yourself.
 
I was aware that many people would be in your position Inka, hence my warning.

I do hope your relative is in a well run home, and, in any case I suspect that nursing homes will be very different to care homes both in the standard of care and their understanding of the principles and practices of infection control.
 
Thank you @Docb 🙂 Your warning alerted me and I’m grateful for that.

Yes, it’s a very good home and has excellent carers but the lack of PPE is frustrating, especially as most care/nursing tasks require close contact. I understand they’re setting up a quarantine zone in case they have cases amongst the residents, but it’s an anxious time, especially hearing how things have panned out in other homes.
 
It’s terrifying. The charity that runs my mum’s home have said that in their 120 homes they have so far had 500 deaths. This is charity that went into lockdown ahead of the uk lockdown and has had good supplies of PPE, taken temperatures of everyone entering the building daily etc etc. My mum’s home has spare capacity in one of its nursing wings so has set that up as an isolation ward for anyone symptomatic and so far her home has had no deaths but I figure that’s as much luck as anything else. The care sector is so poorly funded and so over subscribed in most places that it was always going to be a challenge to keep corona under control if there were staff or residents exposed but the lack of good information from the government and struggles with getting PPE from the start have left many with the worst case scenarios. I feel so much for everyone who works in care. Not only are they dealing with the deaths of people they care about as well as care for they also have the fear of taking any infection home with them or from home into their work. I’m sure many will struggle long term with the after effects of that.
 
@Thebearcametoo, I suspect that the outcomes in your mum's care home has had more to do with good practice by the care home management and staff than luck. Well done to those who helped her select it.

The article I referenced above makes it clear that anybody with any expertise knew care homes would be a big problem right from the beginning. My reading is that the government chose to focus on the effect on the NHS because that is the only sector for which they have direct responsibility. They cannot blame anybody else for deficiencies in that area. Care homes were simply left to sort themselves out with whatever help vastly depleted local services could provide.

The only way of handling it now (remember its all about PR and presentation as far as the government is concerned) is to bury the problem so deep that it's not easy to tease out the details.
 
This problem was predicted in Exercise Cygnus, the model commissioned by the government to plot a theoretical flu outbreak. That was done in 2016. It also suggested that PPE supplies should be regularly reviewed to check ‘use by’ dates. This was completely ignored, which is why there is a shortage now.

Furthermore, there was evidence from countries affected before us that care homes were a hotspot. Again, ignored.

There’s taking your eye off the ball, and there’s wilful manslaughter. Nothing more than a cull of the folk business won’t miss.
 
mikeyB said:
There’s taking your eye off the ball, and there’s wilful manslaughter. Nothing more than a cull of the folk business won’t miss.
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I bet 20c it was mismanagement & because by all appearances they had a lack of actual front-line healthcare input at SAGE etc - too many academics and flu modellers. And it seems like the systems and data work are just not there to give much of a picture of the detailed epidemiology.

Eg: Do they know if the virus is running rampant through meat processing plants like it is in the US and elsewhere? (When did we stop saying "abattoirs"?) In the US, the top three cluster locations are meat plants, aged care and prisons. Nobody seems to be exactly sure why meat plants are so much worse than other manufacturing plants but it's a point of obvious interest.

The latest little outbreak in Oz is at one of these places - just ripped through it. Easy to spot if you just have sporadic outbreaks against a background of sod-all infections. Not so easy if you have community transmission everywhere and lack good reporting and systems ...
 
Eddy Edson said:
I bet 20c it was mismanagement & because by all appearances they had a lack of actual front-line healthcare input at SAGE etc - too many academics and flu modellers. And it seems like the systems and data work are just not there to give much of a picture of the detailed epidemiology.
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They should have known. The (flu) pandemic exercise indicated care homes would be a problem and would need significant help. I suspect it's mismanagement as you say: the Cabinet was chosen to support Boris Johnson's Brexit policy and not particularly to be generally competent and they're relatively inexperienced.

(Not that any random Cabinet would be competent in a pandemic, but you'd hope that they'd realise that and reorganise, bringing in more experienced people, creating special ministers as necessary.)
 
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