Half the Greater Manchester care home deaths reported to the social care regulator are now linked to COVID-19, latest figures show.
In the fortnight to last Friday, 48pc of those notified to the Care Quality Commission here involved the virus, according to statistics released this morning.
Oldham recorded the highest percentage - where more than 60pc of care home deaths notified to the regulator were linked to Covid-19.
Separately, the latest Office for National Statistics data shows the number of coronavirus-linked deaths in Greater Manchester’s care homes more than doubled in the week to April 17, accounting for one in five of the conurbation’s total at that point.
Today’s figures differ from those released by the government daily, which cover hospital deaths only.
The ONS numbers include all deaths according to when they were registered - both inside and outside hospitals, including in care homes - and lags a couple of weeks behind those released by the NHS.
This week it also separately released numbers for care home deaths reported to the CQC by care providers.
The CQC figures show that between April 10 and April 24 - the fortnight to the end of last week - the regulator was notified of 580 care home deaths here, 277 of which were Covid-related.
In Oldham, 61pc of the care home deaths sent to the CQC were linked to coronavirus, while in Salford the figure was 59pc and in Tameside and Rochdale it was 53pc.
The national figure was 37pc.
Meanwhile the ONS’s own data shows a big jump in care home deaths registered here week-on-week.
Up to mid-April it says 255 care home deaths had occurred where Covid was on the death certificate, more than twice the 116 reported a week earlier.
The total number of coronavirus deaths it has recorded so far in Greater Manchester - those that had occurred by April 17, but which were registered up until this weekend - stands at 1,272, meaning care homes accounted for a fifth of the total so far.
Nationally, the ONS reported 21,284 deaths from coronavirus up to that point, 39pc higher than the number reported by the NHS for the same period. More than 3,000 care home residents had died in the space of a week.
The latest figures will heighten concerns about the pandemic’s spread within the care sector, including about the ability of local areas to test care home residents.
In recent days Greater Manchester has stepped up those efforts, while on Friday Salford’s mayor Paul Dennett wrote to the health secretary urging him to improve the quality of the statistics released each Tuesday by the ONS.
He said the city - which has a particularly close working relationship between the care sector and its hospital, Salford Royal - had been testing in care homes for a number of weeks, as well as tracking cases, and believed that approach was now showing in a ‘higher than average mortality figures’ as a result of more accurate data.
