Care Homes: Coronavirus

(asked on 8th June 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what his Department's response was to (a) Public Health England’s (PHE) warning of 24 February 2020 that elderly people should not be discharged from hospitals into care homes if there was risk of coronavirus transmission, (b) PHE’s National Infection Service guidance issued on 24 February 2020 that stated (i) it was not safe to discharge untested individuals to care homes from hospitals where there was an outbreak of 5 to 25 cases and (ii) there should be no discharges to care or residential homes.


Answered by
Helen Whately Portrait
Helen Whately
Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 17th June 2020

The scenario set out in Public Health England’s (PHE) National Infection Service document, issued on 24 February, related to hospital-acquired COVID-19 outbreaks during the containment phase of COVID-19, prior to 12 March, when there was no sustained community transmission in the United Kingdom. There was no evidence of recorded cases of hospital-acquired COVID-19 outbreaks during the COVID-19 containment phase and before 19 March when the COVID-19 hospital discharge service requirements were published.

On 12 March the Government announced that we were moving our COVID-19 response from the ‘contain’ to ‘delay’ phase. The following day (13 March) PHE published new guidance to care homes. We subsequently published the COVID-19 hospital discharge service requirements on 19 March.

Since the start of the outbreak we have been working closely with the sector and public health experts to ensure we have the right guidance and support in place for care homes.

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