![]() We had no cases until 28 March when a resident was discharged from hospital with COVID.” “Because of what we’d witnessed in Spain and Italy, we stopped visitors on 28 February and got PPE. The manager of a care home in Yorkshire said: Several care home managers told Amnesty that they had no COVID-19 in their homes until after they received patients discharged from hospital. On 2 April, the same day that the WHO confirmed the existence of pre-symptomatic cases of COVID-19, the Government reiterated its guidance for hospital discharge that ‘Negative tests are not required prior to transfers / admissions into the care home’. Most shockingly, on 17 March, four days after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, the Government ordered the discharge of 25,000 patients from hospitals into care homes, including those infected or possibly infected with COVID-19. They spoke of waiting to receive guidance, struggling to access (adequate amounts of) PPE, and of having no access to testing, despite having to manage infected patients urgently discharged from hospitals. Amnesty calls for a full independent public inquiry to commence immediately, and for the revision of current restrictive visiting guidelinesĪ series of “shockingly irresponsible” Government decisions put tens of thousands of older people’s lives at risk and led to multiple violations of care home residents’ human rights, said Amnesty International today, following an investigation by the human rights group’s Crisis Response team.Īmnesty’s 50-page report – As If Expendable: The UK Government’s Failure to Protect Older People in Care Homes during the COVID-19 Pandemic– shows that care home residents were effectively abandoned in the early stages of the pandemic.īetween 2 March and 12 June this year 28,186 “excess deaths” were recorded in care homes in England, with over 18,500 care home residents confirmed to have died with COVID-19 during this period.Ĭare home managers and staff described to Amnesty “a complete breakdown” of systems in the first six weeks of the pandemic response.Care home managers and staff say they were left without guidance, PPE or access to testing. ![]() Key failings included decisions to discharge thousands of untested hospital patients into care homes and imposition of blanket DNARs.Press Release OctoUK: Older people in care homes abandoned to die amid government failures during COVID-19 pandemic
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