ITV News reveals plans to discharge Covid-19 patients into care homes

ITV News has uncovered plans to discharge at least 1,800 patients from hospital into care homes during the coronavirus pandemic.
The government has denied there was pressure to move people from hospital into care, after Care England recently blamed discharges for spreading the virus into nursing and residential homes.
But data obtained by ITV News shows how, at the outset of the pandemic, the NHS and councils block booked beds in care homes to ensure they were ready to deal with a surge in patients coming from hospital.
NHS clinical commissioning groups and councils in 17 regions of England replied to ITV News telling us that they had reserved a total of 1,800 beds in care homes, including 182 beds in Suffolk, 122 in the Wirral and 86 in Oxfordshire.
Until mid-April, patients were not routinely tested for coronavirus before being discharged into a home, with care managers having previously told ITV News that they believe that’s how the virus spread among their residents.
The government advice to hospitals prior to April 15 was “negative tests are not required prior to transfers/admissions into the care home.”
ITV News has also discovered some homes are continuing to take Covid-19 positive patients, despite their concerns.  Click the link below to read more:

https://www.itv.com/news/2020-05-28/itv-news-reveals-plans-to-discharge-covid-19-patients-into-care-homes-nhs-coronavirus/