Call for double testing before hospital to care home transfer – First Minister says virus risks “effectively tackled”

Wrexham.com for people living in or visiting the Wrexham area

This article is old - Published: Monday, Jun 15th, 2020

People are staying in hospital longer as a result of new processes to help protect care homes from coronavirus, the first minister today acknowledged. However there are calls from some who want to see even stricter processes as they are fearful of the virus spreading to previously unaffected care homes.

Data seen by Wrexham.com – correct as of last week – comes via a new internal dashboard for local authorities allowing them to gain a high level view on the care home situation in North Wales.

Care homes are designated as having a ‘current outbreak’ if there was a positive test in the last 28 days, for either staff or resident, and are therefore deemed unable to admit. The data we have seen indicates 21% of homes were deemed as having a ‘current’ outbreak, 77 out of 363 care homes in total.

There is a range in days provided since last positive test, some being a few days through to weeks, showing that the virus is still in circulation. Previously Welsh Government have told us the ‘R’ figure is higher in such settings, than in the wider community.

Nearly 12,000 tests of residents and staff had taken place, with Denbighshire and Conwy making up the majority of the 406 confirmed cases. Wrexham had 514 of 1,733 outstanding ‘in progress’ tests.

The data also pointed to a recent uptick of the number of patients waiting to be discharged to existing care home places, as well as discharges to step down beds, with around 170 people in total delayed ready for discharge for various reasons and destinations.

Locally we have been told there is a preference from some care home staff for further caution including two negative tests to be secured for an individual coming from a hospital setting, along with a week in a step down location, before transfer to a care home.

We asked First Minister Mark Drakeford about the backlog of people, and put comments to him that some care staff in the care sector related to us that they have a ‘real reluctance’ to accept new people due to ‘pure fear’ of introducing the virus into care homes.

We also asked what is being done to rebuild the trust in the process, and how can it be that we are several months into the pandemic and care settings still apparently have a higher R figure than community transmission.

The First Minister said: “I don’t think the second point will be a surprise.

“That will be the case in almost any place in the world that where you have groups of people particularly vulnerable to the illness, all under the same roof, that the risk of the R number being higher than it would be in the community made up of people of all ages and far, far more dispersed.

“I don’t think it will be a surprise to anybody to find that the R rate is higher in enclosed communities with vulnerable people than it is in the community as a whole.”

“You will know, and I know you have asked me questions in the past, about the anxiety in care homes at having received people from the health service, who were then found later to be symptomatic.

“That’s why we have taken the actions we have to try to make sure that that doesn’t happen.

“Does that mean that some people are staying longer in hospital than would otherwise would be the case? Yes, it does. But, they are remaining in hospital so that we can be confident that if they were to be discharged and go to a care home, the risk of taking Coronavirus with them has been reduced to the absolute minimum.

“So there are fewer people going from hospitals to care homes, but it’s because of everything that we have learned.”

He added: “What are we doing? We’re making sure that anybody who leaves the hospital is tested, and must be tested as not having Coronavirus.

“We are offering care home testing once a week for the next four weeks to all care home staff. We are trying to make sure that we protect that three quarters of care homes in Wales who haven’t seen a single case of Coronavirus during the pandemic, from people being discharged into them and bringing the virus with them.

“I think trust is being rebuilt because of that, because care homes I hope can see all the extra things that we are putting in place to make sure that the fear that you refer to in the sector, is being carefully attended to and the risks of somebody bringing the virus with them into care homes, has been effectively tackled by the measures that we’ve put in place.”

You can view the full briefing from today on the below video: