Coronavirus: Treatment dwelling people and staff members encounter 5-week delay for COVID-19 test | British isles News

The UK’s largest impartial service provider of social care suggests it no extended has obtain to standard screening for staff members and citizens simply because of an challenge with a provider applied by the government.

In a letter leaked to Sky News, Treatment United kingdom chief govt Andrew Knight suggests there will be a minimal of five weeks right before the business is equipped to accessibility yet another spherical of tests for most of its homes in England.

“We have been notified by the Office of Overall health and Social Treatment (DHSC) that because of to an issue with a certain check from a person supplier, we will no more time have obtain to weekly testing for colleagues or monthly testing for citizens”, states the treatment boss in a letter to people.

“Conversation from the government on this issue has been sorely lacking”, he adds.

“I am sure several of you will find this condition as disappointing as I do, specially specified the beneficial messages the government is continue to issuing about the scale of the screening programme it is supposedly giving.”

The letter was leaked to Sky Information by a anxious relative who explained the government’s cure of care homes as “scandalous”.

Treatment British isles has verified that the letter is real.

The five 7 days hold off relates to asymptomatic testing of personnel and people officials pointed out that typical exams for people with COVID-19 indicators have been nevertheless available with no hold out.

The Division of Wellness and Social Care has been approached for remark.

The division pledged at the start out of July that care residence staff would be supplied coronavirus assessments just about every 7 days and citizens on a regular basis.

A report printed this week into the government’s strategy to social treatment through the COVID-19 disaster located treatment households ended up “successfully thrown to the wolves”.

The assessment by the Home of Commons’ have shelling out watchdog, the Community Accounts Committee, stated social treatment sector had been still left as a weak relation to the NHS.

The determination to discharge 25,000 medical center patients into treatment residences with out guaranteeing they had been examined for the virus was an case in point of the government’s “sluggish, inconsistent and at situations negligent” technique to social care, the committee stated.

It also described the shift as getting an “appalling mistake”.

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Meg Hillier MP, chair of the committee, stated: “Our treatment households had been properly thrown to the wolves, and the virus has ravaged some of them.”

Health Secretary Matt Hancock is facing lawful action over his claim that he positioned a “protective ring” about treatment homes.

Dr Cathy Gardner, whose 88-12 months-aged father Michael Gibson died of suspected COVID-19 in a care property, has demanded that Mr Hancock retracts the remark.