The number of deaths linked to coronavirus in UK care homes in one week could be double that of the whole previous month, according to a report.
The National Care Forum (NCF) said if the pattern it found in its audit was repeated across all residential and nursing homes, more than 4,000 elderly and disabled people have died.
It comes amid calls for accurate data on virus-linked care home deaths.
Only 207 such deaths have been recorded officially in England and Wales.
That is because the daily number of UK-wide coronavirus deaths, announced each day by the government, only includes people who died with the virus in hospital in the four nations.
Ministers have regularly explained that this is because the hospital figures can be quickly collated and released, enabling their experts to analyse trends to help them advise on how the UK is coping with the virus.
Virus-related deaths in care homes – and elsewhere in the community, such as in hospices or in people’s own homes – are measured separately and figures covering England and Wales are announced on a weekly basis by the Office for National Statistics every Tuesday.
Because these are based on what doctors write on death certificates – sometimes only issued in the days after the death – there is a significant lag on collecting this data from the thousands of care homes involved. For that reason, the figures issued last Tuesday only covered deaths up to 3 April.
That official figure of 207 is less than half the figure provided by two of the UK’s largest care home providers which, between them, say they know of 442 coronavirus-related deaths.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC), which holds detailed statistics of care home deaths, has been accused by some in the residential care sector of “dragging their heels”.
The CQC, England’s health and social care regulator, said it was working to “provide more detailed information about how the pandemic is affecting care homes”.
The NCF, which represents not-for-profit care providers, said its findings highlight significant flaws in the official reporting of coronavirus-related death statistics.
It collected data from care homes looking after more than 30,000 people in the UK, representing 7.4% of those people living in one of the country’s thousands of care settings.
It said that, across those specific homes, in the week between 7 April and 13 April, there had been 299 deaths linked to coronavirus. That was treble the figure for the previous week and double that in the whole of the preceding month.
If that number was reflected across all residential and nursing homes, NCF estimated there have been 4,040 coronavirus-related deaths in care homes which are not yet included in official figures.
Separately, analysis from Care England, which represents large care home providers in England, claims that there have been 7,500 more deaths in care home – from all causes – in the last two weeks than would be expected at this time of year.
And modelling by the health consultancy, Candesic, for the Financial Times, suggested the number of deaths due to the epidemic in UK care homes was at least 6,000.
Source: bbc.com