Care home cases piling up as hospitals forced to refuse to take elderly infected
Fifteen residents have died at a care home in Luton, with all five of those tested for the coronavirus showing positive. The Castleroy home has closed to visitors until further notice.
Tragically but predictably – as hospitals around the country are returning infected elderly patients to care homes ill equipped to deal with them – the situation in Luton is far from exceptional.
A care home in Romford has reported at least nine patients confirmed infected – more than a third of its population – while another in the Mossley Hill area of Liverpool has double figures. In Stepney, seven have died and over twenty residents are displaying symptoms, although not yet confirmed positive. Dumbarton and Glasgow have similar cases.
The reality is that most care homes are likely to be in a similar situation either now or very soon.
Those who die outside hospital are not included in the government’s daily report of UK deaths – which today reached a new high of 938. According to the Office for National Statistics, the government is under-reporting even deaths in hospital by almost half.
The government’s ongoing failure to provide proper personal protective equipment even to hospitals, let alone care homes, is taking a terrible, predictable – and largely unseen – toll among the country’s elderly.
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I bet they did, die yes but not of what they tell us, depopulation plan is working in stealth care.
EU scientist resigns and casts doubt on it being fit for purpose
Nowt new there, Greece springs to mind
The other major stress is Germany refusing to bail out rest of EU, looks like neo liberal EU is about to disappear up its own arse,
Financial pandemic should finish the job
Methinks we got out just in time
Seven more have died in a home near me in Stepney. Reported on local news but if this is happening nationally the true figure must be astronomical. A friend works in a care home,treated like dirt for years,paid a pittance,called at all hours to come into work and put under pressure to do so and apparently the staff rest room consists of a tiny room with only a fridge.Having worked for the NHS for years I know the contempt we were held in by managers and the government but it is much worse for the poor beggars in care homes where profit is the only thing that matters.
If your friend who works in a care home is having such a shit time on shit pay in shit conditions working shit hours for years, why doesn’t he get another job. Or has he got shit for brains. Just because you are a socialist it doesn’t mean you can’t get a decent job.
Perhaps because some people do things out of a sense of caring for others but then maybe you wouldn’t understand something like that.
You’d better just hope it’s not you who ends up relying on such dedicated people one day. Ending up in a care home could happen to any one of us. I doubt very much you’d think they had shit for brains then when someone has to clean up your mess.
What goes around all too often comes around.
………yes, your friend can leave & get a paper round, although usually ‘Care Homes’ are staffed by immigrant workers.
Either this chaotic Govt gets its act together and supplies good PPE to all Care Home Staff or admits it’s real policy is culling the expensive buggers; sod them as Johnson’s Chief Advisor commented when drawing up the strategy, “so what?”. Given the megalomania of both PM and Advisor the accuracy of that report can’t be ruled out.
I continue to find it very ironic that the Baby Boomers have met such a grizzly end after lives spent with all the lucky breaks – free health system and Free Education, good housing and any job you wanted along with Peace (compared say to the wretched Americans); now they must pay! The highest number of births in the UK ever was in 1948, people who are now 72. Just as they caused a bulge in the school system and everything else now it’s a bulge in State expenditure on their pensions and knee ops. It’s a coincidence of course – but why can I hear Dominic Cummings giggling?
“I continue to find it very ironic that the Baby Boomers have met such a grizzly end after lives spent with all the lucky breaks – free health system and Free Education, good housing and any job you wanted along with Peace (compared say to the wretched Americans); now they must pay!”
I keep seeing this intergenerational angst blaming boomers. The boomers and their students to blame are the ones in power and with financial influence, banksters etc. not most people who, in truth have no real say what goes on. no matter who they vote for or what they are promised.
I;ll try and organise someone to post a notice when I fall off the twig so you can celebrate with a bitter lemon. Born in 1950s.
I wish you luck in the future.
Remember PAul , the Boomers didn’t ask to be born , they just were !
It’s not their fault that their parents felt hope for a better future having given so much up in the War against the fascists , that they wanted to bring children into the World .
The only reason there is such a dire situation is because of yrs of Tory destruction and Neoliberal policies from NULabour now carried on by Starmer Labour has fucked our world .
PS non of it was free , they all payed Nat Insurance and have paid their fair share , unlike the tax dodging bast’ds in their Tax havens … yes ?
Tributes to the courageous NHS staff who have sadly sacrificed their lives caring for others. It is both a sad and an uplifting read as their family and collogues share their memories and admiration for these inspirational people.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/nhs-staff-deaths-coronavirus_uk_5e8b399bc5b6cbaf282ce3d0
Care home residents usually have pre-existing morbidity/ies, so why are their carers not adequately provided with PPE? It would reduce the death rate in the elderly and also the onward-infection back into the community.
Even when you realise how callous Conservative Government’s can be, they astound you with their callousness.
PAUL – they weren’t “lucky breaks. It was the Socialist governments.There was a Socialist government after the WW2 and then in the 60s, Harold Wilson was elected and, again, after the mess caused by Edward Heath, he was elected again. There were more jobs, decent housing, no food banks, a funded NHS and free Education up to University. Since Thatcher, it’s been neoliberalism which has rolled back the gains made by the people since WW2. Don’t call it luck, please. It’s what those governments did and what those governments since thatcher have all but undone.
Very true ckaikini, also there was fierce resistance to Thatcher’s changes, the miners being a prominent case.
spot on
The lady in question lives in the north east where ,sadly,when you reach sixty years of age ,job opportunities are somewhat limited
These so called care homes are turning into death camps due to the lack of PPE when it was needed. Digusting
Tim – Whilst I wholeheartedly agree with your views on the woeful postcode lottery on the availability of PPE for carers it would be wrong to denigrate all care facilities. There will inevitably be some rogues out there but I believe that most of them will be doing their very best they can to protect their residents.
There are some excelant care facilities. For example my mother is fortunate enough to live in a self-contained flat within a supported housing complex and I genuinely believe that the staff and management are doing the very best they can to keep everyone safe and well. My mum has nothing but praise for them. She has been very impressed and reassured by their high level of communication with all the tenants, explaining to them all individually why they were locking down and the reasons they were imposing each of the restrictions.Also explaining the extra provisions they were putting in place to keep everyone safe with things like the centralised receipt and distribution of things like the post, online shopping and prescriptions. They (unlike the Tories) made extensive preparations and locked down several weeks ago (long before Johnson dictated this) and the management were also forward thinking enough to secure PPE supplies long before there was a supply problem. To date, due to the staff’s dedication and care, not one of the dozens of very vulnerable residents have contracted Covid-!9.
You misunderstand me perhaps. I was born in 1947 and am a member of that ‘lucky’ generation. And luck it was; it was our parents who voted Socialist in 1945 not us! Indeed many if ‘us’ later voted for Thatcher with great enthusiasm – after enjoying those famous freedoms! I was only trying to point out the irony of the situation.
Do you really think in such terms, like a failed Sociology student? An entire generation condemned because of the failure of future generations to manage their society & vote accordingly. Inflated house prices in London are the fault of baby-boomers, so too the ‘gig economy’ & the privatisation of the NHS? We’ve never had it so good? Most of this generation never had it at all & experienced mass poverty & austerity in post war GB. Stop watching Channel 4 News for the bitter & twisted. The inter-generational war is a dangerous Media creation.
The housing market is what it says on the tin….a market based on supply & demand; so too the price of labour. As the UK population increases from 50 million in 1960s to over 70 million now, wages collapse but the demand for houses increases. In a neo-liberal global economy, the cost of labour is negligible.
The MSM 2020 message to those born just after WW2 is to ‘hurry up & die’…..you lucky bed blockers had it all! You’ve had your time & now vacate your homes to solve the housing crisis & stop being a drain on the NHS. You may have worked all your life & paid into a ‘Socialist System’ of care from cradle to grave, but that was then, but now…….,?
A good measure of the moral integrity of our society is how well we treat our vulnerable & elderly. #Me Me.
Well I certainly agree with your last sentence but otherwise I’m not sure what you are trying to say. I’ve never studied sociology but maybe you have, successfully? A lot of the free education was wasted on creating academic pretension and snobbishness. The uneducated are still with you, didn’t you know?
The above was addressed to Maria.
Yes our parents voted but back then there was generational solidarity, some Socialist policies were allowed (not the best word) because of the sacrifice in first and then second world wars. No one I knew voted for Thatcher and I clearly remember my father’s anger and hatred of her policies but many were as usual tempted by promises which were really bribes aimed at demolishing the welfare state and public economic, housing etc. security. Today many Labour people helped crush the Corbyn led social democratic agenda. Powers that be aka wealth, ideologues and Capitalists have spent time since WW11 gaining more and more influence in Parliament, political parties and propagandising the public to roll back all the gains made post war and then some.
I don’t see it as ironic, I see it as tragic.
The public are led by their noses, imo Britain/British ‘establishment’ is one of the expert cultures in propaganda and British are largely well trained to rally round the flag and defer to and cling to ‘their betters’ and Gov to ‘save them’ from every threat that comes along, real or manufactured by Gov, media and relevant state actors and advisors. Britain and it’s state and media is wholly set up to serve the ‘ruling’ classes, not the general public these days.
…..& many, usually sane people, voted for Thatcher because she was a woman. Amazing logic? Starmer also believes in quotas.
‘Sociology’, the study of crass generalisations in a society where individuals cannot exist.You would feel @ home. No form of education is wasted, but you prefer utilitarian skill training to education as all knowledge must serve the interests of employers? Tory logic.
Diversity of knowledge is essential in a healthy society, but curiosity & the ability to question is the key to comprehension. What is sadly lacking, appears to be an inability to empathy as DNR is your default position in your utilitarian society. Have you seen the movie ‘Soylent Green’. It’s a documentary.
So how can one ‘fail’ at sociology if it’s nothing but crass generalisations in the first place? I don’t follow your logic. You make some extraordinary assumptions
Paul – “it’s nothing but crass generalisations”
Unfortunately crass generalisations that the likes of Dominic Cummings use to manipulate society for their own benefit.
Still mystified by your ‘complaint’. Do you just say the first thing that comes into your head?
The BBC has been passed a document sent to GP practices by the Brighton and Hove Clinical Commissioning Group – that’s the local NHS management in that part of Sussex – setting out guidance on how to cope with Covid-19 in care homes.
There are 35 GP practices and 98 residential or nursing homes in that area.
The document spells out that many vulnerable people may not be admitted to hospital for treatment if they contract the virus, and directs all homes to “check they have resuscitation orders on every patient”……………..But one care manager was deeply concerned that residents and families are being pushed to sign the forms……..The CCG guidance even provides a suggested script for GPs to use in conversations with residents and families – part of which says “frail elderly people do not respond to the sort of intensive treatment required for the lung complications of coronavirus and indeed the risk of hospital admission may be to exacerbate pain and suffering”.
It goes on: “We may therefore recommend that in the event of coronavirus infection, hospital admission is undesirable.”……….One care home manager in Hove told me their GP had even told them “none of your residents aged over 75 will be admitted to hospital”. They said they felt “shocked and numb” to hear that.
Another said: “We have been told flatly that it would be highly unlikely that they would be accepted into hospital.”
I’m afraid this advice is common now in NW London where hospitals are at full stretch. Medically the advice may be correct? 2 or 3 weeks in an induced coma with a mechanical device taking over your lung function doesn’t do older people much good, they may well die in the process or especially when the body is required to take back control. A DNAR is something older people need to consider, like it o4 not.
Yes everything might have been very different if Tories didn’t keep winning power. Advice on ventilators for the elderly does take into account underlying conditions such as having heart failure and COPD for example. You can’t really think that isn’t taken into account?! Are doctors in cahoots with Cummings? I don’t think so!
I am unable to paste the link for some reason. However, even if invasive venrilator treatment was medicaly deemed unsuitable for these frail elderly (and that is being decided here on age grounds alone), they are being denied observation and less invasive oxygen help. Obviously hospitals are overwhelmed, but that could have been aleviated somewhat, it could be argued if the government had been more proactive months ago with preparation. This is being facilitated by 2012 Health and Social care act enabled by the Lib Dems – Abolished the Secretary of State for Health’s ‘duty to provide’ a national health service throughout England. This was the legal foundation of the NHS and of our rights and entitlement to health care. This duty has been replaced by a duty to promote a comprehensive health service – not the same thing at all. So the government no longer has a duty to provide you with healthcare, and you can’t sue them if they fail to provide it. Labour should have been shouting this from the rooftops.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55038.htm
We speak to legendary journalist and film-maker John Pilger, who discusses the fact that the Conservative government was warned about shortages leaving the NHS vulnerable in pandemics 4 years ago. Pilgers criticisms of the Boris Johnson administration’s response to Coronavirus, the lack of mass-testing in the U.K. which has been seen in other countries such as Germany, South Korea and China, the government blaming China for the Coronavirus crisis, the threat to Julian Assange’s life as he is denied release from prison as Coronavirus claims its first victim in Belmarsh Prison and more!