31 Leeds care homes facing Covid-19 outbreaks

Leeds City Council’s most senior health officer has warned that the city’s care system is ‘not yet on top’ of the Covid-19 pandemic, as issues around outbreaks, testing and PPE in care homes continue.
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Cath Roff, the council’s director of adults and health, claims there are currently 31 care homes in the city facing a Covid-19 outbreak, while staff are quickly running out of equipment such as gloves and masks to help control the spread of the virus.

She also added staff were struggling to be accurately tested, and suggested carers’ often-preferred home test method could have yielded inaccurately negative readings.

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Ms Roff told a meeting of Leeds City Council’s decision-making executive committee this week: “We are still continuing to experience new outbreaks [in care homes].

31 care homes across Leeds are currently facing a Covid-19 breakout.31 care homes across Leeds are currently facing a Covid-19 breakout.
31 care homes across Leeds are currently facing a Covid-19 breakout.

“We have 31 homes at the moment experiencing a Covid infection – it is down from the highest figure which was about 43, but as some outbreaks are concluded in care homes, there are new outbreaks in new care homes. They are not on top of this completely, yet.”

On the issue of testing, she added that the drive-thru test centre in Temple Green was not ideal for many care workers, as most did not have a car to access the site.

She added: “The experiences of carers is that it is easy to request tests, but they are taking seven days to turn up, which is not ideal at all.

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“They are also feeding back that testing starts, with a reliance on the Temple Green site, isn’t ideal. An awful lot of care workers don’t own cars and don’t drive, so they are requesting the test kit that can be sent home.

“But swabbing is quite complex – you have to get it into the right bit at the back of the throat and you mustn’t touch the tongue or the tonsils, which is tricky to do if you’re doing it yourself.

“So we are seeing a high level of invalid tests that are coming back as negative, when we suspect this is not necessarily the case.”

She added: “On a more positive note, we have a task group that goes into care homes on a daily basis and looks at what the challenges are.

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PPE remains a challenge – the quantum of support we have had via the [local resilience fund] stock drop has steadily diminished, and we are, as of today, out of stock for masks, aprons, gloves and sanitiser, though we are now supporting them with Leeds City Council stock.

“We are rolling out infection control training as we speak. That has proved to be welcome, but we are having to adapt how we deliver it, and we need to make sure we dont overwhelm homes.”

Leeds City Council’s portfolio holder for adults and health, Coun Rebecca Charlwood: “It’s a Herculean task they are undertaking and they have particularly strongly held up in our homecare setting.

“It’s been a very trying time – we would like tests in a huge numbers and we would like to test everyone regularly and have PPE available. But the nature of the care sector is fragmented.

“I want to highlight that they have been working hard in difficult circumstances.”