Thousands of care homes residents continue to die every week with covid-19. The disease now contributes to almost half of all deaths among care home residents, far higher than in the first wave of the pandemic last spring.

Cllr Elaine Sherrington, Labour’s Adult Social Care spokesperson said: “We know the Government failed to protect care home residents early in the pandemic. They failed to deliver PPE and sent many people back into care homes after a spell in hospital without even testing them. The recent spike in care home deaths shows that they despite all their warm words they are failing again and people are needlessly dying because of it.”

In the last month 40% of care homes inspected by the Care Quality Commission in England were judged to be inadequate or in need of improvement. Several handling fatal coronavirus outbreaks were revealed to have broken laws meant to keep residents safe.

Cllr Martin Donaghy serves as Chair of the Health Overview and Adult Social Care Scrutiny Committee. He asked for a full review of local care homes last summer so the Council could learn the lessons from the first wave of the pandemic and see where it had done well and where there were issues. Bolton Labour are urging the Council to go ahead with this review now and stop more lives being lost.

Cllr Donaghy said: “Maybe if the Council had took the time to investigate where local care homes had done well and where they had failed we could have improved practices across Bolton and saved lives this winter. People are still at risk in our care homes today. The Council should act now.”