The International Long Term Care Policy Network provide reports that “aim to document the impact of COVID-19 on people who use and provide Long-Term Care and the measures adopted by different countries to contain and mitigate the impact of the virus.” Reports are regularly added to the Ltccovid website as new information becomes available.

Adelina Comas-Herrera and Jose-Luis Fernandez, Care Policy and Evaluation Centre, Department of Health Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science have produced a report with estimates of mortality of care home residents linked to the COVID-19 pandemic in England, 12th May.

“Key findings:

• Data on deaths in care homes directly attributed to COVID-19 underestimate the impact of the pandemic on care home residents, as they do not take account of indirect mortality effects of the pandemic and/or because of problems with the identification of the disease as the cause of death. 

• Data on registered COVID-19 deaths in care homes in England and Wales only accounts for an estimated 41.6% of all excess deaths in care homes.

• Not all care home residents die in care homes, (according to CQC data, 15% of all deaths of care home residents are found to happen in hospitals). Deaths of care home residents in hospitals are not currently accounted for in publicly available estimates of the number of deaths in care homes linked to the pandemic.

•  Calculating total excess mortality in care homes since 28th December (19,038, 46% of all excess mortality in England and Wales), and adjusting this by the assumption that 15% of care home residents die in hospital, suggests that by the 1st May there had been in excess of 22,000 deaths of care home residents during the COVID-19 pandemic (54% of all excess mortality) in England and Wales.”

For access to the full report click here