Many care homes will be "extremely challenged" in coping with elderly coronavirus patients, the chairwoman of the National Care Association has said.
Nadra Ahmed warned some care providers could struggle to effectively isolate patients, even in homes with “very, very clear isolation units”, which many do not possess.
It comes after the Government published its new care home plan on Friday.
Under the new proposals some patients can be discharged from hospital into care homes after a positive test, but it makes clear no provider should be forced to accept an existing or new patient if they cannot deal with their Covid-19 safely.
Ms Ahmed told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday: “We are looking after some of the most vulnerable people who could succumb to this virus… a care home is a home, it’s like your own home and if it’s in the home, then you have got to protect everybody in it.
“So to introduce somebody into it, even if you have got isolation, you then have to make sure that the staff who are going to be looking after them, how they are protected.
“Providers are going to be extremely challenged with that unless they have got very, very clear isolation units, and not many homes have that.”
She also criticised the “testing fiasco”, complaining that results were taking nearly a week to return and not 24 to 48 hours.
Ms Ahmed went on: “It’s five to six days, which is just a nonsense, and of course the residents’ tests are once a month, so we are still quite widely exposed and not being able to be absolutely 100 per cent sure every single day about the level of that risk.”
She also expressed concern about nurses and Care Quality Commission staff moving between different homes regularly, adding: “We are really concerned that the exposure is still there and we need to shut it all down… this is a shielded group of people and I think that needs to be taken much more seriously than it is at this moment in time.”
Under the Government’s adult social care winter action plan, visitors to care homes in areas with high numbers of coronavirus cases will continue to be constantly supervised.
Any facility listed by Public Health England’s (PHE) surveillance report as being an area of intervention should immediately move to stop visiting, except in “exceptional circumstances”, the plan says.
Additional reporting by PA Media.
