Covid kills half of Sussex Care Home residents on Christmas | World News

East Sussex care homes have been devastated by Covid, losing half of all residents to the disease during Christmas, and new, more contagious viral variants sweeping southeast England are beginning to break home defenses. I am fueling the fear.

Thirteen of the 27 residents of Crowhurst’s Edendale Lodge Care Home have died of confirmed or suspected Covid since December 13, managing a home operator operating a care home in Kent. Director Adam Hutchison said.

More than one-third of staff were also positive during the outbreak of population deaths on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. The latest death came this Monday.

“It was a terrible Christmas and a terrible thing for the staff,” Hutchison said. “It can’t be stopped. We are sitting on a duck.”

Throughout the UK, as a result of control measures, outbreaks of Covid in long-term care facilities are increasing again months after months of infection rates much lower than in spring.

On Tuesday, the Essex County Council banned all visits to care homes in the area because of “increasing outbreaks in care homes and the difficulty of controlling these outbreaks.” The Kent Integrated Care Alliance, which represents the care facilities in the area, also warns of death and absence of care workers, mental and mental fatigue of care workers, and threats to the survival of the care facility itself.

Many care facilities are dissatisfied with the fact that the vaccine has not yet been deployed to the population. Boris Johnson told Congress on Wednesday that he wanted to accelerate the program and that 10% of care home residents and 14% of care home staff had been vaccinated so far.

“It obviously needs to be strengthened,” the Prime Minister said.

The GP planned to start taking the AstraZeneca vaccine for home care later this week.

According to Hutchison, some of the deceased residents at home were thought to be nearing the end of their lives, but the virus took months before they were more likely to die. Others were more appropriate.

“One of our inhabitants was playing the piano and I talked to him when I entered,” he said.

The outbreak was detected by regular swab tests. None of the 14 residents who tested positive were asymptomatic when the results returned, Hutchison said. One of the 12 staff members who tested positive was hospitalized but was recovering.

This outbreak, with the exception of windows, is a home infection, including a ban on visits, personal protective equipment for caregivers, and a ban on the use of agency staff who can act between different homes and spread the virus. It seems to have confused the control measures.

“It’s hard to say how it worked,” Hutchison said. “Everything was there, thanks to the protocol we followed.”

He said some residents attended hospital appointments and staff inevitably lived outside of work. His company, Belmont Healthcare, operates four care homes and asks staff to declare if they have a second job.

According to official figures, deaths in long-term care facilities across the UK steadily increased in December, slightly faster than Covid’s overall deaths. At the beginning of December, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, UK care facilities recorded that 440 people died in Covid a week and increased to 588 by the week before Christmas. The numbers are much higher than in the last week of September, but only 42 died in Covid, but up to 2,700 long-term care facilities registered weekly from Covid at the first peak of the April pandemic. It remains only a small part of the resident. Also, there are fewer tests to identify cases.

HC-One, the UK’s largest private sector of care facilities, said on Tuesday that one-third of 330 care facilities are facing outbreaks, but in most cases the number of infected people is limited. And more staff than residents were positive. There are fewer homes in the southeast than in the north, and the incidence fell last month.

Visits to care homes are largely forbidden throughout the UK unless residents are nearing the end of their lives or have infection control screens or cubicles installed. Free PPE is provided by the government to homes, and a network of care homes dedicated to accepting Covid-positive discharges from hospitals to avoid virus dissemination among the most vulnerable people has been established. I did.With the current blockade, close indoor visits prohibited, Visits to windows and cubicles are also prohibited during the outbreak.

Hutchison said he was concerned that not only labor costs, but also the care facilities affected by the new outbreak “should simply be closed.”

“What happens to people who are already in infeasible care facilities?” He said. “Where do those individuals go? Often the NHS setting puts more stress on their medical services.”