75 nursing homes need ‘intensive’ support during Covid-19 crisis

Yesterday the HSE confirmed the deaths of 21 people in St Mary’s Hospital in Dublin since the outbreak of Covid-19.

75 nursing homes need “intensive” support during the Covid-19 crisis, a health service manager said.

Concerns have been expressed about deaths amid clusters of infection at care properties.

The HSE said there was no evidence the virus was being spread from discharged hospital patients.

Anne O’Connor, chief operations officer at the HSE, said many nursing homes were relying on telephone advice and support.

“Our preference is to support the nursing homes to continue to provide care. It is very important that we seek to support the nursing home to provide care.

The nursing home is a person’s home, they should only be moved on the basis of clinical need.

A total of 285 premises are receiving support for Covid-19 cases, including the 75 with “intensive” needs whose operations are deemed by health service managers to be at significant risk.

That is out of a country-wide total of 435 long-term care facilities.

The HSE has disclosed that 21 people have died at a Dublin nursing home since the start of April. St Mary’s Hospital in the Phoenix Park cares for the elderly.

Another HSE official said: “We are seeing that patients are being well-managed and are well cared for.

“It is around ensuring that we can, as much as possible, shore up that support and care that is needed within the residential home itself.”

Most are being managed well, with good attention to detail like fluids and nutrition, she added.

“Another group of sicker patients need higher level nursing support.”

Mass testing has begun at the institutions to discover who has the virus, including those who are asymptomatic. Staff who test positive will have to leave the workplace.

This month has seen a sharp increase in the number of cases and deaths from the virus in nursing homes, in part due to the effort to rapidly test residents.

Covid-19: HSE designates 75 nursing homes as 'status red'

75 nursing homes have been given a "status red" - meaning there is a significant risk to how they are operating.

The Health Service Executive (HSE) is currently supporting 425 long term residential care facilities affected by Covid-19.

Speaking about the status designations, the HSE's Chief Operations Officer, Anne O'Connor, said a major factor in designating a nursing home as "status red" is staffing levels and that nursing homes "would be where we [the HSE] have deployed the highest numbers of staff."

Ms O'Connor also warned that as testing is further implemented in nursing homes that more outbreaks of Covid-19 will be "inevitably" identified.

She said that the main challenge for the HSE then is to identify the nursing homes that "have a critical need for a high level of support."

Meanwhile, HSE chief Paul Reid has confirmed plans are being made to ramp up testing for Covid-19 to 100,000 tests a week.

He also said the deadly virus would be with the health system at least until next year and there was a need to plan for non-virus services for patients.

The “war-like response” by services would need be adapted to ensure other services are kept going, the HSE CEO explained.