Corona-stricken care home residents should be evacuated and treated in empty beds at temporary Nightingale hospitals, MPs demanded last night.
The Government was urged to save the lives of the elderly by filling up vacant Nightingale sites with OAPs from virus-hit homes.
At least 7,500 elderly residents have died from Covid-19 – despite a warning from the Sunday People three weeks ago that the care home system was a time bomb.
Now Labour’s shadow minister for care and older people, Liz Kendall, is urging the Government not to waste any more time and to use Nightingale hospitals to stop the virus spreading among 500,000 residents and staff.
The ten emergency facilities – seven in England and one each in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – have a total of 11,000 beds.
NHS England have refused to reveal how many beds are spare.
But London’s ExCel Centre Nightingale which has 4,000 beds has treated only 41 patients.
Ms Kendall said: “We have to provide alternative care. There’s a real urgent need to look at any spare capacity there is at facilities like the Nightingale hospitals to see if they can care for residents.
“Care home staff are being asked to do extraordinary things. They’re very skilled – but we need to make sure that care homes are not turned into hospices because that’s not what they are there for.”
Ms Kendall added: “The NHS has done very well on ramping up critical care bed capacity, emptying beds and changing care pathways so that there is extra capacity in hospitals.
“If there is free capacity in the NHS, including in NHS Nightingale hospitals, the Government should explore whether elderly and disabled people with Covid could be treated there to help limit the spread of the virus in care homes.
“The failure of testing elderly people who have been discharged as well as the appalling lack of PPE for care homes is what has caused this terrible toll of deaths.
The Government must do everything to make sure they do not repeat the mistakes of the past.”
More than 7,500 OAPs are feared to have died in the UK in care homes since the pandemic hit, with a lack of PPE, the movement of agency staff between homes and years of austerity blamed for fuelling the crisis.
This week the World Health Organisation warned of an unimaginable human tragedy in care homes across Europe.
Daily figures released by the NHS only count hospital deaths, which appear to be falling, but there are fears that the toll in care homes may soon outstrip these.
Labour MP Peter Kyle, who has campaigned to highlight this crisis, said: “I’m in touch with many care homes and they are telling me their biggest stress is when someone becomes symptomatic as it’s almost impossible to isolate everyone.
“Remember that some people in nursing homes and care homes will have varying degrees of dementia.
“Without using inhumane and probably illegal methods of restraint it’s simply not possible to isolate them in the way you would others.
Therefore people who are symptomatic need to be distanced effectively. If that means being creative and using Nightingale hospitals, what’s stopping us?
“During this crisis hospitals have been allowed to re-invent themselves, while care homes are in a straitjacket.”
The Nightingale solution would also mean proper medical treatment for stricken OAPs.
Melanie Henwood, an independent health and social care consultant, said: “Increasingly, it is being reported GPs are not visiting care homes and that residents who become infected will not be taken to hospital.”
And care industry chiefs called for elderly patients being discharged from hospital to be sent to sites like the Nightingale before going to homes.
Nadra Ahmed, from the National Care Association, said: “It’s a sensible move. It’s one that would allay fears as well as protect people. That way at least we would know that people moving into the care services are Covid-19 free.
