Covid-19: Care Homes

Lord Laming Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, PHE has published a report on that. It calculates that around 1.6% of the deaths in care homes were directly attributable to discharge. That number is very sad, but it is a relatively low proportion. This will, of course, be a subject covered in the government inquiry that the Prime Minister has already announced.

[Lord Laming (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I feel sure that the Minister will agree that it was extraordinary that, when relatives were prevented from visiting their loved ones in residential care, and many of the residents could not understand why they had been abandoned, at that very time patients were being admitted from hospital without having been tested for this virus.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I completely sympathise with the point on those in care homes receiving a very tough challenge when they have been prevented from seeing loved ones. We have had to take extremely severe infection control measures, many of which are still in place for the reasons that have been discussed in this Chamber before. But I challenge the noble Lord’s point on testing. We brought in testing when asymptomatic infection was recognised and when the capacity was available.