Elderly residents of Britain’s care homes are in danger with more than one in ten experiencing coronavirus outbreaks.
Covid-19 has so far struck in 13.5% of the UK’s 11,300 care homes, numbers released by the Department of Health only include those who have died in hospital.
This has led to concerns that the death toll, which stood at 12,107 on April 14, is actually considerably higher.
Officially the number for England and Wales stands at 217, according to numbers released by the Office for National Statistics on Tuesday. However, that only includes deaths up until Friday April 3.
In Scotland the number is around 237. The National Records of Scotland's statistics show that a quarter of the nation's 962 confirmed or suspected coronavirus deaths have occurred in care homes, as of April 12.
That brings the total across England, Wales and Scotland - where Covid-19 is mentioned on the death certificate - to 454.
That number is expected to rise with care homes across the country, including Luton and Sheffield, reporting multiple coronavirus-related deaths since April 3.
Sir David Behan, non-executive director of HC-One, Britain's largest care home operator, said on Tuesday that 311 residents have died as a result of, or suspected, Covid-19.
"It's present in 232 of our homes which is about two-thirds of the total number of homes that we run,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Chiefs at industry body, Care England, believe the true number is nearer to 1,000.
Calls have been growing for the number of care home deaths in England to be recorded on a daily basis, in line with hospitals.
However, the UK Government's Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey has said that is not “currently possible”, but is “sure improvements will continue to be made where that is absolutely possible”.
"I think that the certification by doctors is happening regularly, that is being collated by the ONS and it is being published weekly by the ONS,” she added.
"I think that is a fair system of getting that picture, that unfortunate picture, across the country of where deaths are happening due to coronavirus and I think that is a trustworthy way to go about this by the medical certificates signed off by doctors."
Responding to the ONS’ statistics on deaths from Covid-19, Shadow Social Care Secretary, Liz Kendall, said: “We urgently need these figures on a daily basis to help deal with the emerging crisis in social care and ensure everything possible is being done to protect more than 400,000 elderly and disabled people who live in nursing and residential care homes.”
Meanwhile, research by a team based at the London School of Economics has found that about half of coronavirus deaths in five European countries are in care homes.
The study has found that 42-57% of deaths in Italy, Spain, France, Belgium and Ireland have been care home residents.
