as the corona virus pandemic claims
hundreds more victims ministers have
sought to address the deep concerns
around the situation in care homes in
England they've now promised a new
testing regime for both residents and
staff and for anyone being discharged
from hospital to a care home but the
announcement has prompted a series of
questions about how realistic the plans
are given the slow progress on testing
in the NHS which is still nowhere near
the government's official target of a
hundred thousand tests a day now the
latest official figures for the UK show
that there were 761 deaths reported in
the last 24 hour period it means that so
far the official number of deaths in the
UK linked to coronavirus is twelve
thousand eight hundred and sixty-eight
that number doesn't include deaths in
care homes or in the community in
England and Northern Ireland but NHS
managers have struck a rather more
optimistic note today they say it's
increasingly likely that the NHS will be
able to cope with the peak in cases that
is expected soon because they say of
good planning and lower than expected
demand on intensive care our health
editor Huw PEM has the latest
it was his lifetime ambition and Graham
achieved it last November Coe piloting a
plane a gift from his family at 77 he
was still very active he recently went
to hospital with cancer the family
assumed Graham would come back home but
he never returned having contracted
kovat 19 his grandsons wife Emma who
herself now has coronavirus spoke of
their sadness and frustration it's not
[Music]
and we have a big family so we can't go
and it can't get the send-off he Denis
Eve truly too
finding a way out of the coronavirus
crisis will depend largely on a big
increase in testing ministers have
called on academic and business
laboratories to join a national effort
to boost capacity some big companies
have said they will help out but one
business manager with laboratory's told
us how he felt that his offer hadn't
been taken up understandably frustrated
a little unhappy I mean it would be very
easy to sit and enjoy the sunshine and
wait until things open up again but you
know I I feel like I have a duty to the
country and my team to keep them busy to
do something worthwhile the number of
tests carried out each day hasn't gone
up a lot though there has been a bank
holiday weekend it stands at just under
16,000 but that's still a long way short
of the 100 thousand a day target set by
the government by the end of this month
just two weeks away
NHS workers will be tested if they need
it
including drive-through centers like
this letting them get back to work
quickly if they test negative
that'll now apply to social care staff
in measures for England announced today
following Wales a few weeks ago
including testing of care home residents
and those returning from hospitals we
will now ensure that everybody who has
symptoms guest tested and the critical
other change is that those leaving
hospital will now be tested and they
will be put into isolation until those
test results come through how are you
actually going to cover this large
number of social care stove and NHS
staff and hospital patients how is it
going to be achieved so now we have
testing available right across the NHS
and social care for all those who need
it and I'm very pleased we've been able
to expand capacity so that that can
happen and as we build capacity further
over this month and then beyond to that
hundred thousand a day target band at
the end of this month will expand expand
further he also said that relatives
should be allowed to visit loved ones
who were seriously ill with coronavirus
for final farewells
the peak of pressure on the NHS was
expected about now with a surge in kovat
19 patients health leaders say there are
still critical care beds to spare and
most hospitals appear to be coping but
the peak could last sometimes well we
think we can say with increasing
confidence that the NHS should be able
to cope with this initial peak the
interesting thing though is there's now
a whole lot of new challenges the NHS
faces in which the very obvious one is
if we're going to have this demand
spread over a long period of time how
are we going to support our staff and
was uplifting news when Connie aged 106
left hospital in Birmingham she said she
felt very lucky to have shaken off the
virus Cupid BBC News so as we've heard
there's a new government promise that
all residents and workers with symptoms
in English care homes will now be tested
along with anyone returning to a care
home from hospital although care home
providers welcomed the plans many say
that their calls for greater support in
terms of staffing and training and
specialist kit continue to be ignored
our social affairs correspondent Allison
Holt has been to hear firsthand how one
care home in Essex is trying to cope
[Music]
today at the st. Ives lodge care home in
Chingford they said goodbye to six of
their elderly residents five of the
deaths were linked to kovat 19 the signs
of its presence in the home marked out
by the masked and gound staff each life
lost a member of this family a simple
service to provide a few moments of
reflection at a deeply distressing time
for staff residents and the families
listening online the home cares for 35
people many with dementia a resident
returned from hospital with the virus
had the testing announced today been
available it might have helped but the
manager says despite all their
precautions the virus spread quickly for
the last three weeks we've been lucky
little
any hospital where we've been dealing
with enter life patients and relatives
people seeing their relatives to end a
life having to dress them all up in PPE
before they can say goodbye it's been
it's been so awful I mean it's awful
it's it's just surreal
it really is it's an experience that
residential and nursing homes up and
down the UK are now facing in video
diaries staff here told us that the toll
it's taking on them recently over the
past few weeks has been very hard
watching your residents get ill and die
in not being able to give your residents
a hug or a kiss when they really need it
we've lost them a number of dear people
to us they become our family it's
probably the hardest thing that I've
ever had to do to come to work and look
after the people in this PPE but
unfortunately this is the situation at
the moment and this is what we have to
do care homes like this welcome the
government's strategy on social care as
some recognition for what they're
dealing with but for many it's been too
slow in coming and they want rapid
action
like many care homes they say so far
they felt left on their own to deal with
this crisis struggling to get enough
protective equipment and even now not
all their staff can be tested at
drive-thru centres there's still 18
staff that haven't had a knee test in
and can't have testing because they
don't drive and our residents haven't
been tested and I think we need that
sort of as soon as possible because I
think it would help massively and how we
manage and quarantine different parts of
the haim and the staff here say they
need to know that the promises made will
lead to actual support this protective
suit I'm wearing cannot shield humanity
so they won't be alone Allison Holt BBC
News