- Vaccine and testing trials have announced good progress this week
- This doesn’t change the gloomy outlook for the care sector
In normal times, care homes are occasionally forced to shut their doors to visitors. Every winter, when the flu season comes around, children, siblings and partners patiently wait to see their loved ones again, comforted by the knowledge that brief isolation is the best way of containing the virus and preventing excessive deaths.
In 2020, lockdowns have been anything but brief. Many of the care homes that closed their doors in March have still not yet reopened, as the government works to shield society’s most vulnerable from Covid-19. The illness triggered by the SARS-CoV-2 virus causes more devastating symptoms in the elderly and unwell than the young and healthy. Just under 20,000 of the 58,000 Britons reported to have died with Covid-19 this year were living in care homes.