Covid-free Desborough care home has virus outbreak after NHS sends patients in

A Covid-free care home in Desborough has had an outbreak after three patients were discharged from the NHS into its care with the virus.

Cheaney Court in Desborough says it was told in writing by Kettering General Hospital that two residents who were admitted between May 25 and June 4 were Covid negative.

However after being placed in an isolation wing and being immediately tested the results came back that both residents, and a third who had been admitted during the same period by Northamptonshire Healthcare Foundation Trust from Cransley Hospice, also had the virus.

The news has been met by fury with people who have loved ones in the home.

Lynda Goodman, whose husband Alex has dementia and is cared for at Cheaney Court, says she is ‘fuming’ and has complained to the hospital as well as her MP. Last week was the first time she had been able to see him in months because of the lockdown. Now her visits will have to stop again.

She said: “This is just not on. I am worried for my husband as well as the staff. Why are care homes being treated like this? I am absolutely furious that the NHS has discharged patients to where my husband is living saying they were Covid free and then it turns out they are not.”

A spokesperson for Cheaney Court Care Home said: “It is our policy that we require written confirmation of a negative Covid-19 test before any resident is admitted.

“As a further precaution, all incoming residents are placed in isolation and we also carry out our own tests. On three occasions, positive results have been received for Covid-19. The three affected residents remain in isolation and medical advice is, happily, that they are likely to recover.”

Sadly Cheaney Court has had one death much earlier on during the lockdown after a patient was admitted from the NHS. A home spokesman said it had been coronavirus free for five weeks before May 25th.

Kettering General Hospital’s medical director, Professor Andrew Chilton, said: “We cannot comment about individual patient cases in a care home for confidentiality reasons.

“We can clarify what processes are followed by Kettering General Hospital in line with national guidance.

“We test all inpatients for Covid-19 on admission to hospital and again within 48 hours of discharge into residential care.

“For patients who test negative, and don’t have Covid symptoms, we recommend that receiving care homes continue isolation for 14 days from the date of discharge.

“This is because Covid may not show on test results during the incubation phase.

“The guidelines we are following have been agreed by the Northamptonshire health and social care system and are in line with national guidance.”

Additional information provided by the hospital said it used the ‘best tests possible’ but these were only 75 percent accurate. It said patients who have been symptomatic with Covid sometimes test positive, then negative, then positive again and this is thought to be because of remnant amounts of virus being picked up by the test.

Kettering General Hospital has now had 200 Covid 19 deaths and one day this week recorded among the most deaths of any hospital in England.

During March, on NHS orders, across the country there was a mass evacuation of elderly residents out of hospitals and into care homes, with some people not being tested before discharge.

However it now appears that this mass discharge could be in part responsible for the high death toll in care homes, with more than 12,000 care home deaths in the UK due to Covid 19.

In Northamptonshire there have been more than 75 of the county’s 250 care homes have been affected by coronavirus.