Coronavirus UK live: Covid-19 much more prevalent in care homes than official figures imply, says expert | Politics

It is not just HC-One that is saying that the prevalence of coronavirus in its care homes is much higher than the official figures suggest. (See 9.27am.) As Robert Booth and Rowena Mason reports, MHA, another leading care home provider, says Covid-19 has affected around half of its homes. They report:

HC-One, which operates about 350 homes, said that as of 8pm on Monday there had been 311 deaths from confirmed or suspected Covid-19 with outbreaks in two thirds of its homes. MHA, a charitable operator, said there have been 210 deaths across 131 homes, with outbreaks in about half of its homes …

MHA’s figures up to Monday also suggest a considerable increase of 89 fatalities in the last six days. Last Tuesday, it told the Guardian, there had been 121 deaths.

The full story is here.

The ONS has just released its latest weekly death figures for England in Wales, which include a figure for the number of deaths in care homes. The daily coronavirus death figures published by the Department for Health and Social Care every afternoon only cover hospital coronavirus deaths.

The figures cover the week ending Friday 3 April (week 14 for the ONS). The report suggests that 10% of coronavirus deaths during this period were taking place outside hospital. Of those, more than half were in care homes, with the rest in private homes and hospices. The report says:

The year-to-date analysis shows that, of deaths involving the coronavirus (Covid-19) up to week 14, 90.2% (3,716 deaths) occurred in hospital, with the remainder occurring in hospices (33 deaths), care homes (217 deaths) and private homes (136 deaths).

The problem with these figures, of course, is that they are probably more than two weeks out of date. The cut-off date was 11 days ago. But the figures are also based on information from registered death certificates, and on average they take five days to process.

The Conservative peer and former work and pensions minister, Ros Altmann, has said she is “really concerned” about what is happening in the care sector. She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

We seem to have this artificial distinction between the NHS and what is called social care or elderly care in particular, and that is being overlooked, it seems to me.

You know the government has real problems and of course it has got difficult decisions to make, but we must not forget that the mark of a civilised society must reflect how it treats its most vulnerable and oldest citizens.

Altmann said “one or two people from care homes” have told her they feel as though elderly people are being treated “like lambs to the slaughter”. She added:

I’m sure that the government really cares about what’s happening and it’s an enormous task.

We must not forget the most elderly in our population – the average age of people in our care homes is 85 – their lives are also valuable and they need the treatment and the equipment and the care that we would expect for anyone else in society as well.

The shadow chancellor, Anneliese Dodds, said Labour are seeking to have “as constructive a relationship as possible” with the government to defeat coronavirus.

Asked why the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, is not taking up the government’s offer of joining the emergency Cobra meetings, Dodds told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

I know that Keir has been seeking to work with government as much as is possible and he’s had a number of discussions, as I understand it, with different individuals involved with government.

We’re seeking to have as constructive a relationship as possible and obviously we’re trying to do that in a spirit to get us to the best place that we can be as a nation.

She added:

I don’t know the circumstances under which that may have been offered and the decision making around that.

I do know that Keir is absolutely determined for us to do all we can as an opposition to try and support efforts to support people and indeed the health of the country.

But I would also say there’s something very important about ensuring we have accountability and transparency as well.

UPDATE: The Today programme subsequently broadcast a correction, saying that Starmer had not been invited to attend Cobra meetings (which explained why Dodds sounded a bit thrown by the question.) But Labour and other opposition parties have been invited to government briefings on coronavirus, and the Labour politicians Mark Drakeford and Sadiq Khan have participated in Cobra meetings in respective capacities as first minister of Wales and mayor of London.

Sir David Behan, non-executive director of HC-One, Britain’s largest care home operator, said Covid-19 is present in two-thirds of its care homes.

The former chief executive of the Care Quality Commission told the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that as of 8pm on Monday, there were 2,447 suspected and confirmed cases of Covid-19 in HC-One care homes.

“It’s present in 232 of our homes which is about two-thirds of the total number of homes that we run,” he said.

He said 311 residents have died as a result of, or suspected, Covid-19, along with one member of staff. Sir David added:

Covid-19 deaths are representative of about… just under about a third of all deaths that we’ve had over the past three weeks.

So this isn’t just an issue of deaths from Covid-19 as I’ve already said, this is a very frail group of older people and we’d normally have a number of deaths taking place throughout the winter months and we’re also dealing with that as well.

Global governments should agree a common standard on medical screening at airports, the boss of Heathrow has said.

Chief executive, John Holland-Kaye, claimed a single system for assessing passengers’ health will help demand for air travel recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

He added that this would be an important boost to Britain’s economy.

Heathrow continues to serve the nation by keeping vital supply lines open, and helping people get home.

Now is the time to agree a common international standard for healthcare screening in airports so that when this crisis recedes, people can travel with confidence and we can get the British economy moving again.

He made the comments as Heathrow announced that passenger numbers for March fell by 52% compared with the same month in 2019.

Many of the 3.1 million journeys were repatriations, as people flew to and from the west London hub to reach their homes.

The UK missed three chances to be part of an EU scheme to bulk buy personal protective equipment (PPE) for health workers, according to reports.

The Guardian revealed that Britain failed to utilise opportunities to get items such as masks, gowns and gloves under an EU initiative.

The government has come under severe criticism for it’s failure to provide PPE to NHS staff.

European medical staff are set to receive the first of £1.3bn-worth of PPE within days, or a maximum of two weeks, under the EU scheme involving 25 countries.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “We will continue to work with European countries and others in order to make sure that we can increase the capacity within the NHS, and we will consider participating in future EU joint procurement schemes on the basis of public health requirements at the time.”

At the daily Downing Street briefing on the coronavirus emergency on Monday, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said the government was trying to give frontline staff reassurance over PPE.

“I think the strongest practical reassurance they will want and that we can give them is that over the Bank Holiday weekend, over 16 million items were delivered and we are straining every sinew to roll them out even further and even faster,” he said.

Motorists were caught driving at “extreme speeds” over the Easter weekend, with one driver clocked at 151mph.

The Metropolitan Police also caught a driver travelling at 97mph in a 40 zone and four drivers going over 100mph on the A13.

Detective Sergeant Andy Cox, Scotland Yard’s lead officer on roads policing, posted video footage of a pursuit on the M1 where speeds reached more than double the limit.

He said: “Extreme speeds this wkend in London. Many enforced including 97mph (40) on A10.

“This driver reached 151mph on M1 before decamping car & evading on foot. We will do upmost to identify & take action.”

Drivers have been taking advantage of quieter roads created by the coronavirus lockdown, with four in 10 cars exceeding the speed limit in Greater Manchester, mayor Andy Burnham said last week.

Nadra Ahmed, chairwoman of the National Care Association, has called on the government to remove VAT on protective equipment for care homes.

She told ITV’s Good Morning Britain that care homes were struggling to source and pay for personal protective equipment and prices were “not sustainable” for the care sector.

She said the government had removed VAT on the essential kit for the NHS and urged it to do the same for the social care sector.

Ahmed said one provider had paid £8,500 for just one week’s worth of PPE, adding:

We’ve said to the chancellor, ‘take the VAT off PPE, these are essential items’.

They’ve taken it off for the NHS but they’ve not moved it for social care… without our staff we can’t deliver the care.

Therese Coffey, the work and pensions secretary, said: “People will start to receive financial support if they haven’t already had an advance.”

She also said that people who started work after 28 February, and are therefore excluded from the government’s job retention scheme, “can go back to their original employers to ask to be furloughed”.

Responding to Coffey’s interview, the shadow chancellor, Anneliese Dodds, said: “We’re getting to the stage now where it’s not just opposition figures, it’s actually the public and the business community who really need to have more information, for example about how a number of different schemes are working.

“It has taken quite a long time to get information about how many of those business interruption loans have been provided – actually the figures are significantly lower than any of us had hoped they would be at this stage.”

She added: “Unless we get that support to businesses within the next two weeks or so we could have really quite a big spike in businesses going bust and in people potentially being laid off.”

The shadow chancellor, Anneliese Dodds, said she is concerned about the low take-up of the coronavirus business loan scheme, and that more information is needed to establish whether the government intervention is effective.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Dodds said: “We really think the government needs to be actually publishing statistics around these different programmes. We need to know how many applications have been made, how many have then been successfully awarded.”

She added: “We need to know whether the right systems are in place and unless we have the right data we can’t do that, we can’t identify where they need to change if we don’t have that information.”

Dodds said that “we’ve got two weeks, as people watching this will know – if we’re going to have any chance of getting these schemes working fully before the next pay day – so unless they’re actually sorted out very soon, then we potentially could have an even deeper impact on our economy then already that which has occurred”.

She added that she is “quite concerned about the low take-up of that loan scheme”.

The work and pensions secretary, Therese Coffey, said we are talking about a battle against coronavirus “that isn’t going to be over in weeks, it will take months”.

Speaking to Sky News about the use of masks by the general public being under review, Coffey said:

So far the medical advice has been that it is only really needed in a clinical setting and it is not necessary for people, by use in public.

As was set out, if that evidence changes then of course we will review that but thus far I’m not aware of any change that’s required in order to make sure that masks become a general way of life for people.

On the contrary, the advice is still very firm – you do not and should not be wearing masks outside unless you’ve had clinical instructions to do so.

On universal credit, she added:

We’re up to about 1.4m people who have claimed universal credit and also other people who have claimed other things like jobseeker’s allowance or employment support allowance.

So we are capable of processing and managing those claims.

Almost two thirds of graduating students have had job applications paused or withdrawn due to the coronavirus pandemic, a survey has suggested.

The Bright Network survey of more than 5,000 students, found that 80% of this year’s graduates are worried that coronavirus will affect their grades and 83% feel under more pressure because of uncertainty prompted by the pandemic.

Some 63% of students said their applications had been paused or withdrawn because of the virus’ continued spread, showing the market for graduate jobs has slowed significantly since the onset of the crisis, the network said.

Just under half (49%) of would-be graduates were confident of securing a job before the pandemic, but that has dropped to one third, the survey suggested.

James Uffindell, founder of the organisation, which aims to connect young people with employers, said:“It’s incumbent on universities, employers and services like ours to step up our support to ensure graduates are getting into the right careers – helping to rebuild an economy that will have been severely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.”

Good morning, it’s Jessica Murray here, and I’ll be taking you through the latest coronavirus developments in the UK this morning.

As always feel free to get in touch via email – [email protected] – or via Twitter – @journojess_

The government’s scientific advisers are due to meet later today to review the impact of the UK’s coronavirus lockdown measures.

At a Downing Street press conference yesterday, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, suggested it is unlikely there will be any changes to the lockdown this week and it could be extended by at least a month.

At the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) meeting on Tuesday, experts will consider hospital admissions, intensive care capacity, testing and the effectiveness of restrictions.

The government insisted its plan to tackle the coronavirus pandemic “is working” and said the latest data suggested the UK was “starting to win this struggle”, three weeks after restrictions were imposed.

But Raab said the virus was not yet past its peak and that it was “far too early” to talk about relaxing the measures

Details of how the lockdown will eventually be lifted remain unclear, however, with the government repeatedly refusing to outline its “exit strategy”.

It came as the World Health Organisation said restrictions should be lifted slowly and not “all at once” to avoid a resurgence of the virus, and only if appropriate measures are in place, including “significant” capacity for contact tracing.

But experts have also warned that the public’s strong support to stick to the lockdown measures “won’t last” and the government needs to find a way to tell the nation about how it will be eased.