And the scientists say it is “very likely” that most regions in England are close to the point at which the virus begins to spread exponentially.

The Cambridge model is only one model that feeds into SAGE’s official regional R rate estimate and is released weekly.

However, it should be noted that Government advisers say regional Rs – which estimate the number of people an infected person spreads the virus to – should be viewed with great caution, because they become mathematically uncertain as the number of cases fall.

And the number of cases in Devon and Cornwall remains very low compared other areas in the country – and the South West is still one of the English regions least affected by the virus. Yesterday, there were only 22 people in hospital in the whole of the South West with coronavirus, with none on a ventilator – and only one hospital death anywhere in the South West in the last two weeks.

Nonetheless, the R rate in the South West is now estimated to be 1.04, but could be anywhere between 0.77 and 1.38 – and is higher than anywhere else in the country.

Viruses can begin to spread exponentially if the R rate rises above 1.

It comes as the number of confirmed new cases of COVID-19 coronavirus in Cornwall tripled in a week to 19, which saw the the rolling seven-day rate of new cases per 100,000 people rise from 0.9 to 3.3.

However, Devon’s – public health director has said rises in rolling new case rate in some of its Local Authority areas are NOT believed to be linked to visitors to the area.

The county saw five new cases confirmed in Torbay and 12 new cases across the rest of Devon, with three in East Devon, five in Exeter, two in Mid Devon, two in North Devon, and one in the South Hams, with no cases in Teignbridge, Torridge or West Devon.

Plymouth also saw a small rise in the new COVID-19 coronavirus case rate. The latest data from Public Health England shows that the rolling seven-day rate of new cases per 100,000 people has risen from 1.5 to 1.9, with five new cases confirmed.

The figures, for the seven days to July 26, are based on tests carried out in laboratories (pillar one of the Government’s testing programme) and in the wider community (pillar two).

By comparison, in Blackburn with Darwen, the rate has risen from 81.2 cases per 100,000 people in the seven days to July 19 to 87.3 in the seven days to July 26 – and a total of 130 new cases have been recorded.

But Prime Minister Boris Johnson has warned that “clearly we now face, I’m afraid, the threat of a second wave in other parts of Europe and we just have to be vigilant”.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock also said the figures showed a “second wave starting to roll across Europe”.

So why does R become less useful?

• When there are few cases, R is impossible to estimate with accuracy and will have wide confidence intervals that are likely to include one. But this does not necessarily mean the epidemic is increasing.
• As incidence decreases, R will tend towards 1, and has to be evaluated in conjunction with incidence.

R is an average measure. When incidence is low, an outbreak in one place could result in estimates of R for the entire region to become higher than one.

Conversely, small, local outbreaks will not be detected. Estimates of R based on small numbers may also not capture change in the area fast enough to inform policy in a useful way.

The Government are set to publish a Devolution White paper this Autumn with speculation it would see county and district councils – the top tiers of authority – be invited to propose merging their powers and become Unitary councils.

This week, a majority of Somerset county councillors voted to abolish themselves and create a new unitary authority for the whole county, which would see Somerset’s five existing councils abolished and replaced by May 2022, while discussions are taking place across the country.

From 2007 to 2010, there was a strong possibility that Devon’s two-tier council structure might be reorganised, with either a Unitary authority for the whole of Devon created, or a second option that would have seen Exeter granted Unitary status. The latter of those was given the go-ahead in 2010, only for the reorganisation to be reversed when the Conservative Government came into power following the General Election.

At last Thursday’s full Devon County Council meeting, Cllr Alan Connett, leader of the Liberal Democrat group, asked the leader of the council, Cllr John Hart, for his view on the retention of the current system of district and county councils.

Cllr Hart said that it was something that looked like it may raise its head again and he was waiting to see what the Government says in the white paper this Autumn, but added: “I have maintained that if they don’t insist we go to Unitary model, I will not lead, a charge, and all it will do is reactivate the fighting.

“It would divide Devon up and then things get a bit more complicated. Devon has the size and capacity to work with the districts and to serve the people. I have no wish to open up a guerrilla war and start something and get us into a position that might not be resolved in the short term and argue with the districts for years on end and ruin the current good relationship.

“We will wait until September and then we will talk before anything happens, and hope there will be no backdoor deals from their side and as there won’t be any from ours.”

Cllr Connett said he was grateful that Cllr Hart ‘won’t lead a charge and that Devon County Council isn’t involved in predatory works’. He added: “It is best to wait for the paper and I think we need to avoid a separate approach and need to look at what is right for Devon and do what is the best for the residents. We must avoid what we did before when so much was spent to achieve so little for the people of Devon.”

Cllr Rob Hannaford, leader of the Labour group, added: “There is clearly no appetite in Devon for another costly and disruptive reorganisation of our local government. We have just seen, during the first wave of the pandemic, how well all levels of local government in Devon have worked together to respond, and with all the huge operational, financial, economic and social pressures that we are coping with, this is really the last thing we need to consider.

“To blow everything up now would be an act of political vandalism to our local communities, and a terrible barrier to making the progress that we need to make across the whole county.

“The real issues facing local government here in Devon are a lack of devolved powers to the existing council, gross underfunding, the ability to plan and develop services for the long term, and a lack of trust from central government. Its emphatically not local government reorganisation.

“We don’t want one huge hollowed out remote giant county council unitary with a massive democratic deficit. We also don’t want our county divided into four quarters, that would make no Sense to the people they are supposed to serve and represent.

“Let us fight for Devon, and its residents, through our existing local government family, rather than starting another toxic unitary war, that will benefit no one.”

Cllr Julian Brazil said that ‘Unitary by revolution’ was something that no-one wanted, but proposals to evolve towards one could be explored and that more shared services among the councils would be a way of saving money, with many senior officers doing the same job.

In a letter to relatives of residents, Care UK chief executive Andrew Knight, said the Department of Health was blaming issues with kits from a particular supplier, but said communication with government had been “sorely lacking”.

Liberal Democrats said that thousands of people would miss out on vital tests as a result of the issue. Days after a damning parliamentary report which found that Boris Johnson’s government threw care home residents “to the wolves” in the early stages of the pandemic, party health spokesperson Munira Wilson said the new revelations showed that this was still the case today.

Care UK runs more than 110 homes across the country, and Mr Knight warned that similar problems were affecting other major care organisations. The halt in regular testing comes as Mr Johnson is stressing the importance of the test and trace system to fend off the threat of a second wave of coronavirus.

It is understood that the government’s recall of kits supplied by private company Randox on safety grounds on 15 July caused significant disruption to the provision of tests for weekly and 28-day tests in care homes in England, while access remained readily available in Scotland.

Since 6 July, care homes in England have been promised regular testing on a weekly basis for staff and every 28 days for residents. Repeat testing for asymptomatic individuals was initially limited to care homes looking after people aged over 65 or those with dementia, but is due be rolled out to all care homes from August.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) stressed that anyone living or working in a care home who has coronavirus symptoms or suspects they have the disease will still be able to access testing via Local Health Protection teams.

Announcing the rollout of regular tests less than four weeks ago, health secretary Matt Hancock said the scheme would “not only keep residents and care workers safe, but give certainty and peace of mind to the families who may be worried about their loved ones, and give staff the confidence to do what they do best”.

But Mr Knight said that optimism about regular testing had been “short-lived” and it was now “increasingly difficult to access regular testing across all of our homes”.

The Care UK CEO said: “We have been notified by DHSC that due to an issue with a particular test from one supplier, we will no longer have access to weekly testing for colleagues or monthly testing for residents.

“Communication from the Government on this matter has been sorely lacking. We have also been in contact with the DHSC, the Social Care Taskforce and the care minister to ask that this situation is resolved quickly, but the latest indications we have suggest that for most of our homes in England there will be a minimum of five weeks wait before we are able to access another round of testing.

“We have been exploring options for privately-funded testing, but as yet have been unable to identify a supplier who is able to reliably support us at the scale we require. This experience is mirrored across other major care organisations.”

Regular testing for care homes was introduced following anger over coronavirus outbreaks which claimed thousands of lives of elderly residents in the early weeks of the pandemic.

But on 15 July, the DHSC announced that some kits supplied by Northern Ireland-based Randox were being withdrawn as they did not meet safety standards. The department said at the time that it would be “supporting all testing settings to receive replacement kits as soon as possible”. But care sources said that new supplies had not materialised at the necessary scale.

Mr Knight told families of residents: “I am sure many of you will find this situation as disappointing as I do, especially given the positive messages the government is still issuing about the scale of the testing programme it is supposedly offering.”

Liberal Democrat health spokesperson Munira Wilson said: “If we needed any evidence that this Government is still throwing care homes to the wolves, then this is it. From the very beginning of the pandemic this Government failed to ensure care homes had access to adequate testing and PPE, whilst discharging patients with the virus into their homes.

“This letter is damning. With a potential second peak on the horizon, the UK’s largest provider of social care no longer having access to regular testing for staff and residents will leave thousands of our most vulnerable exposed to coronavirus.

“The prime minister and his government are not learning the lessons they need to if we are to prevent more people losing their lives. An inquiry into the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis must begin now, so ministers can learn from their errors and help protect families right across the country from more heartache.”

Boris Johnson exaggerated the government’s record on poverty by repeatedly using inaccurate and misleading figures, the UK statistics watchdog has found.

The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) made the statement in response to a complaint from the End Child Poverty Coalition, which said the Prime Minister had used data ‘selectively, inaccurately and, ultimately, misleadingly’ since last December’s General Election.

The coalition said Mr Johnson’s claim on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on December 1 that there are ‘400,000 fewer children in poverty than there were in 2010’ was incorrect.

It also said Mr Johnson’s statement that ‘absolutely poverty and relative poverty have both declined under this Government’ and ‘there are hundreds of thousands, I think 400,000, fewer families living in poverty now than there were in 2010’, made at PMQs on June 17, this year was also untrue.

Furthermore, the coalition contended that at PMQs a week later, Mr Johnson incorrectly said ‘there are 100,000 fewer children in absolute poverty and 500,000 children falling below thresholds of low income and material deprivation’.

In the letter, Anna Feuchtwang, chairwoman of the coalition, said it cannot be right that such figures are used ‘selectively’.

She wrote: ‘While it is expected – and right – that child poverty should be the subject of robust political debate, it cannot be right that official figures on something as fundamental as how many children are in poverty continue to be used selectively, inaccurately and, ultimately, misleadingly.’

Responding to the complaints set out in the letter, Ed Humpherson, director-general for regulation at the authority, said: ‘Our team has investigated the statements which you highlight (and has reached the same conclusion that these statements are incorrect).’

Poverty is difficult to definitively calculate, as the OSR explains there are four official measurements which can be used.

These are relative poverty, which records households with less than 60 per cent of contemporary median income, before and after housing costs, and absolute poverty, which compares numbers against baseline figures from 2010/11, again before and after housing costs.

In March, data from the Department for Work and Pensions estimated the number of people living in a relative low-income household after housing costs had risen to 4.5 million in 2018-19 from four million the year before.

It was the highest number of people living in poverty in the UK since figures were collated in 2002.

An OSR blog post reads: ‘There is no wrong measure, but there is a wrong way of using the available measures – and that is to pick and choose which statistics to use based on what best suits the argument you happen to be making.’

Ms Feuchtwang said she welcomed the conclusion from the watchdog that the Prime Minister had used child poverty statistics incorrectly.

‘It is deeply insulting to the children and families swept into poverty when data about them is used selectively and misleadingly at the whim of politicians,’ she said.

‘The simple fact is that by any measures child poverty is rising but instead of tackling the problem the Government risks obscuring the issue and misinforming the public.

‘The lives of real people are at stake and we need consistent use of information and urgent action.’

Child Poverty Action Group chief executive Alison Garnham said: ‘The hard truth is that child poverty is growing in the UK but the Government is in denial on this – that has to shift.

‘If we are to make progress, the problem must be confronted not circumvented.

‘If the will and the focus are there, a strategy can be agreed and action taken to prevent more children from being damaged by poverty.’

She added: ‘It’s our moral responsibility to safeguard children from poverty and to invest in them.

‘It’s also the most significant investment we as a nation can make for our future.’

Imran Hussain, director of policy and campaigns at Action for Children, said that the longer the UK is in denial of the scale of child poverty, the harder it will be to fix.

‘This isn’t about the Punch and Judy of PMQs,’ said Mr Hussain.

‘Admitting that rising numbers of ordinary families are struggling to keep their children clothed and well fed matters to good policy making.

‘You can’t ‘level up’ the country if you’re sweeping under the carpet the big rises in child poverty clearly shown by the official figures.

‘The longer we’re in denial about the scale of the problem, the harder it will be to fix it.’

Shadow education secretary Kate Green said the Prime Minister must ‘come clean’ and correct the record on the issue.

She said: ‘It is shameful that the Prime Minister is unable to tell the truth about the hardship faced by so many families struggling to make ends meet.

‘Children and families in such difficult circumstances deserve better than this shabby treatment from an out-of-touch Prime Minister who has repeatedly failed to be honest about the challenges they face.

‘The Prime Minister must now correct the record, both publicly and in Parliament, and ensure that when he next raises his Government’s damning record on child poverty, he comes clean about what the stats are saying.

A village in Dorset has been identified as suffering some of the worst air pollution in England, with a taxi rank in Sheffield coming in second.

Chideock, which is about three miles west of Bridport on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast, was found to have the highest levels of atmospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) in the country. The readings have been blamed on the A35, which runs through the village.

NO₂ has been shown to be linked to an array of health problems, including respiratory issues, increased risks of cancer and lower life expectancy. It is produced by fossil fuels.

Chideock recorded an annual average level of 97.7 micrograms of NO₂ per cubic metre of air in 2018, the most recent year for which records are available — more than twice the annual limit of 40 micrograms set by the government’s Air Quality Objective.

Is this a lost cause?”

(Owl advised contacting the planning officer – bat surveys only have a short validity)

Tom Ballwww.thetimes.co.uk

A quarter of Britain’s native mammal species, including hedgehogs, red squirrels and water voles, are officially at risk of extinction, a pioneering assessment shows.

The new Red List drawn up by the Mammal Society meets international criteria used to assess threats to wildlife such as elephants and tigers and shows that 11 of our 47 native mammals are at risk of dying out.

They have become endangered because of threats ranging from historical persecution to the use of chemicals, loss of habitat and the introduction of non-native species.

At greatest risk are wildcats, of which there are fewer than 20 in the wild in Scotland, and greater mouse-eared bats, with only one known individual. Both species are classed as critically endangered.

Hedgehogs and hazel dormice are classed as vulnerable to extinction, and five species, including mountain hares and harvest mice, are judged to be nearing threatened status.

The intervention comes as Boris Johnson pointed the finger at Europe and said “swift” action was being taken to prevent localised outbreaks identified on the continent spreading back to the UK.

However, epidemiologists told The Independent that the government’s own policy failures would likely play a part in an “inevitable” increased infection rate in the UK – which still has a higher death ratio than most of its neighbours.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the BMA’s council, told MPs on Wednesday that confused messaging from the government and lack of a “systemic approach” on policies like mask wearing and social distancing was behind a weekly rise in infections.

Warning that there were “too many examples of potential spread” he told a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on coronavirus: “At the moment we’re not doing everything we should in trying to contain the virus.

“If I look even at something as simple as our messages on social distancing: we’re told that social distancing is still two metres, or one metre plus.

“Do you think any member of the public understands what one metre plus means? What does the plus mean? Many don’t really understand this because it’s not clear and they’re not social distancing.”

He also pointed to potential deficiencies in the government’s mask policy, adding: “If you want to suppress a virus you don’t just make an announcement and then leave people with free will whether to wear them … you then follow that up with a very systematic approach to make sure that happens.

“What I mean by suppressing is you take an attitude that says: we want to do absolutely everything to make sure the infection doesn’t spread. That needs a much more robust approach.”

He warned: “The point is that I’m not sure that sense of clear, single-minded determination to do everything we can is being done and that’s what I mean by suppressing: to really take the attitude that yes, we can resume normal living – you can go out, you can do things, but make sure that we have very clear messages about what is expected of both the public and workers to stop the spread.

“There are measures that can be taken and at the moment I think I see too many examples of potential spread, just walking out into the high street and peering through shop windows. If a hair dresser wears a visor without a mask, that’s not going to suppress the virus. Has that message gone to all employers as to what needs to be done to stop the spread of the virus?

“If you look at the figures at the moment, the last ONS figures from last Friday, the weekly figures, the infection rate has increased. We’re now seeing about 2,700 new cases a day compared to 2,500 the week before. And so I think now is the time we must be much more robust and rigorous about how we mitigate the spread.”

Boris Johnson on Tuesday said there were signs that a “second wave” of coronavirus would hit, but blamed Europe for the potential return. The UK still has a significantly higher death rate than other European countries, but some have seen a rise in the rate of infections in recent weeks.

Britain reported a further 119 coronavirus deaths on Tuesday, taking the official death total to 45,878. An additional 581 people also tested positive, slightly down on recent days.

Academics told The Independent that a second lockdown was unlikely because of a lack of public appetite, but that other measures needed to be sharpened up to prevent a serious resurgence in cases.

Dr Bharat Pankhania, senior consultant in Communicable Disease Control at the University of Exeter said the messaging around the lifting of lockdown had been “unfortunate” and that it was “inevitable” that cases would go up.

“When the prime minister lifted lockdown, I said it was unbelievably premature. There were mixed messages – people don’t listen to the chief medical officer saying we must do this carefully and take precautions, because the virus is still there. But they do listen to the prime minister saying let’s go out and celebrate, and I think that was really unfortunate. Lifting quarantine was a risk and it could be foreseen it was a risk, but we were under pressure form the travel industry and it takes backbone to stand up to that,” he said.

“It’s inevitable that UK cases will go up when you open, unless you are cautious. That public health message of ‘go carefully’ just isn’t there. The virus hasn’t gone away. The only thing in our favour is that it is the summer and people are more likely to meet each other outdoors. That will keep case numbers down in July and August but I am worried about September.”

However, Dr Pankhania said it would not be appropriate to reimpose a full lockdown now: “There is no stomach of a new lockdown. People are losing jobs and businesses are going bust. I don’t think we can go back to lockdown now, other measures should be taken.”

Dr Gabriel Scally, President of the Epidemiology and Public Health section of the Royal Society of Medicine and member of Independent Sage said a larger second wave was unlikely but that localised outbreaks should be expected.

“What we can expect in England for some time to come is localised outbreaks because the government has decided there is an acceptable level of Covid-19 cases. The Joint Biosecurity Centre suggested in a paper in May that the ‘acceptable incidence’ was 1,000 new positive tests a day. I think that is far too high and will result in flare-ups occurring across the country. Hopefully the arrangements in place will enable those flare-ups to be suppressed, but if there are too many of them the capacity at a local level won’t be able to deal with them and they will emerge as a wave,” he said.

“A second wave is unlikely, simply because an awful lot of older people and people with underlying conditions have lost a lot of trust in what the government says is or isn’t safe and they are going to be very cautious about where they go and what they do. The bursts of new cases we are getting now are predominantly among younger people.”

The World Health Organisation on Wednesday also warned that young people enjoying the summer appeared to be behind the coronavirus spike and were being hit the hardest.

Dr Scally also warned that there was “no government strategy for getting rid of the virus”.​

“If we were really serious about this, we would be doing a lot more public information than we are doing at the moment, on washing your hands and social distancing and identifying symptoms. There is very little messaging happening now and I suspect if you asked people what were the four symptoms of coronavirus, you wouldn’t get a very high level of accuracy,” he said.

“There is no government strategy for getting rid of the virus. They issued one on 3 March, but the only strategy since then has been for lifting the lockdown. We have got to get better public information and better case-finding and get our act sorted out in terms of the data about where the cases are. This stuff needs to be running like a well-oiled machine, which it isn’t at the moment.”

Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, who is chairing the APPG’s inquiry at which BMA chair Dr Nagpaul was speaking, told The Independent: “It is deeply concerning that the government still has no overall strategy to aim for zero Covid, as medical experts are calling for. Ministers must come forward with a clear plan, informed by the science, which seeks to eliminate this deadly virus from the UK.

“This should include fixing the flawed Test and Trace programme and introducing screening for coronavirus at public transport hubs and entry points to the UK. The evidence suggests the government’s complacent approach earlier this year cost lives, we cannot afford for the same mistakes to be made again.”

Former IMF chief Christine Lagarde has praised female leaders around the world for their “stunning” response to the coronavirus pandemic, especially when compared to their male counterparts.

Ms Lagarde, who now heads the European Central Bank, said the policies adopted by female heads of state were proactive and their communication style was clear.

“I would say that for myself I’ve learned that women tend to do a better job,” she said.

She added: “This is my woman’s bias and I indulge in ceding to this bias.”

But data suggests Ms Lagarde’s assessment is correct.

The top 10 worst affected countries are all led by men, both in terms of total number of cases and cases per million people.

It is difficult to make a like-for-like comparison without considering factors like health expenditure, tourism and population density. There are also far fewer women in positions of power, with only around 10 per cent of countries having a female leader.

A recently released study attempted to factor in these variables, finding that on every metric female-led countries performed better than male-led countries.

When comparing countries with similar population sizes, such as Ireland and New Zealand, the researchers found that countries with women in charge experienced far fewer cases.

The paper, written by economists Supriya Garikipati and Uma Kambhampati, hypothesised that female-led countries fared better due to qualities shared by female leaders.

Previous studies have found that women are more risk averse and favour a style of leadership that is empathetic and science-based.

The researchers suggested that these traits meant women leaders are risk averse with regard to lives, but prepared to take significant risks with their economies by locking down early.

Prioritising economic outcomes has been one of the reasons for the US not imposing a nationwide lockdown, which has contributed to surging case numbers.

It has since returned in small numbers, as the country begins to open up its borders, although infections are nowhere near on the scale of the first outbreak.

“Our findings show that Covid-19 outcomes are systematically and significantly better in countries led by women and, to some extent, this may be explained by the proactive policy responses they adopted,” the researchers concluded.

“Even accounting for institutional context and other controls, being female-led has provided countries with an advantage in the current crisis.”

The high death toll from COVID-19 in care homes has unleashed a “tidal wave of grief” from all over Britain, according to the human rights lawyer who is leading a landmark challenge against the Government.

The legal action claims the state violated the fundamental right to life of thousands of the most vulnerable old people in our society. It accuses the Health Secretary, NHS England and Public Health England of failing to protect residents and staff in care homes.

COVID-19 has already claimed the lives of 20,000 care home residents in England and Wales – one in 20 of the old people who live in nursing homes. Some researchers believe this official figure is an under-estimate.

Now health campaigners and leading charities are demanding a fundamental reform of social care and tougher laws to combat age discrimination.

In Brussels, meanwhile, trade union leaders and MEPs have backed calls for a Europe-wide investigation into the “silent tragedy” of care home deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic.

‘What were they doing to protect care homes?’

At the heart of the legal challenge to the British Government is the case of Dr Cathy Gardner, whose father Michael Gibson died from “probable COVID” in his Oxfordshire care home on the 3rd of April. Shortly before his death, a patient who had tested positive for COVID-19 was discharged from hospital into the same care home.

Dr Gardner – who has a PhD in virology – told openDemocracy: “The rush to clear NHS beds threw the care homes under a bus because nowhere in the guidance about discharging from hospitals does it give any consideration to care homes. What were they doing to protect care homes? Nothing! When you go through the evidence you are left with the thought that this is deliberate.”

Her lawyers are seeking a judicial review of the way in which COVID-19 was handled in care homes. openDemocracy has been given access to the 95-page application for judicial review. In the next few weeks, a judge will rule on whether the case should go ahead.

Dr Gardner has decided to press on with her legal challenge after what she called a “shameful” initial response from the Health Secretary, NHS England and Public Health England. “The defendants have failed to engage with my concerns, failed to disclose relevant documents and have sought to hide behind procedural objections. This is a shameful reply when thousands of very vulnerable people have lost their lives, leaving me and many others bereaved.”

A public appeal on Crowd Justice, the crowd funding platform specialising in legal issues, has raised over £85,000 in support of Dr Gardner’s campaign.

The lawyer leading the case, Paul Conrathe, said the state had violated the most fundamental human rights of elderly and disabled people in care homes.

He told me: “The thing that is deeply disturbing is if you stand in the shoes of the old person. You are dependent on your carers. You’re locked in your home. More than anyone else in the country, you are powerless. The state that is there to protect you then unleashes the floodgates into your place of safety and you have no ability to do anything about it. That is profoundly disturbing and it has brought an outpouring of grief from all over the country. It’s hard to believe this could happen.”

Joining Dr Gardner in her legal challenge is Ms Fay Harris, whose father Donald Percival died on 1st May after COVID-positive patients were discharged from the NHS into his care home.

‘It could have been done more humanely’

Professor Sir Brian Jarman – one of Britain’s foremost experts in evaluating death rates in health care – has been researching one crucial week in the story of how care homes coped with coronavirus.

On Tuesday 17th March, NHS England sent out a letter urging all hospitals to “free up the maximum possible inpatient and critical care capacity”. The letter said NHS trusts must “urgently discharge all hospital in-patients who are medically fit to leave”.

But at the time, nurses and doctors had no guidance or rules on whether they should test patients for COVID-19 before they left hospital.

Professor Jarman uncovered data showing that in the same week ending Friday 20th March, cases of acute respiratory illness in care homes in England were already rising very steeply just as hospital staff were sending untested patients back into homes.

He told me: “They took the decision to discharge patients possibly with COVID to care homes that didn’t have PPE. They must have known that care home residents and staff were unprepared. The data published by Public Health England showed they were already aware of the outbreak of severe respiratory disease in care homes. They knew! They monitored it. And they still went ahead knowing what was happening.”

Professor Jarman said the much-publicised Nightingale Hospitals could have been partly adapted as isolation units for COVID-positive old people in that crucial month from 17th March to 16th April. Instead, they remained almost empty. Many doctors and nurses on standby to staff them were never called in.

“It could have been done another way, a much more humane way, if you wanted to save the elderly.”

NHS England has since released figures showing that just over 25,000 patients were moved from hospitals into care homes between 17th March and 16th April, a period when testing was still not widely available. It was also a time when the care sector gave a series of warnings saying homes were poorly prepared for the pandemic and still desperately short of protective equipment for staff.

‘Focus upon the NHS’

Dr Cathy Gardner and Professor Brian Jarman are far from alone in their concerns about how care homes are surviving the coronavirus pandemic.

A few days after Dr Gardner’s father died, homes in the Torquay area of Devon refused to take hospital patients who had tested positive for COVID-19. “That would be tantamount to importing death into care homes,” said Graham Greenaway, owner of the Warberries Nursing home. “Asking us to take COVID-positive patients is asking us basically to make out a suicide note for people in care.”

Professor Martin Green, chief executive of Care England, told MPs that ministers had abandoned care homes in their scramble to save the NHS. Many homes did not have the right set-up to isolate patients coming from hospital, he said. “We also had the disruption to our supply chains for PPE [personal protective equipment]. And we saw people being discharged from hospital when we didn’t have the testing regime up and running.”

Professor Green was speaking to MPs at the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee on 19th May. The next day, Justice Secretary Robert Buckland admitted the Government had prioritised the NHS over social care early in the COVID outbreak. He told Sky News: “We needed to make a choice about testing. We decided to focus upon the NHS.” Pressed on whether it had been government policy to focus on the NHS “first and foremost” over care homes, he said: “That’s right and I think that was absolutely essential.”

Mr Buckland said there had been “huge issues” in adult social care and added: “We’ve seen a huge tragedy in our care homes, which is a great regret.”

Govt ‘constantly learning about virus’

In response to Dr Cathy Gardner’s legal action, the Department of Health and Social Care said it had taken “extensive measures to protect the people who live and work in care homes in response to the risks posed by COVID-19”.

The Health Secretary Matt Hancock repeatedly told MPs that he had “made social care a priority from the start”. Care homes had done “amazing work” during the crisis, he said. The government had been “constantly learning about this virus from the start and improving procedures all the way through”.

Mr Hancock said ministers had done everything they could to protect care homes and had thrown a “protective ring” around them. Nearly two-thirds of care homes had not seen coronavirus outbreaks.

‘A human, social and ethical tragedy’

The COVID crisis in care homes is not confined to Britain. Throughout Europe and the USA, between 40 and 60 percent of all COVID-19 victims are residents of nursing homes.

Sweden’s minister for health and social affairs, Lena Hallengren, said: “We failed to protect our elderly. That’s a failure for society as a whole. We have to learn from this. We’re not done with this pandemic yet.”

According to Professor Geffrey Pleyers, a sociologist at the University of Louvain, Belgium had decided that the lives of old people in care homes counted for much less than those of “active” people. “It is a human, social and ethical tragedy that asks us countless questions.” He added: “With the residents of nursing homes, we have also forgotten the people who care for and feed them. They often worked without any protection and today many are infected with the coronavirus.”

More than 100 MEPs from across the political spectrum have described the treatment of care homes during the COVID-19 pandemic as a silent tragedy. “These are places where residents and workers have often been exposed to great risks without appropriate safeguards.”

In Italy, people talk instead about a “silent massacre”, a phrase derived from reporting on human rights abuses in South America. A picture is worth a thousand words – local media in Lombardy ran photographs of a chapel in an old people’s home filled with coffins instead of pews.

When soldiers were called in to help disinfect nursing homes in Spain, they found some residents left dead in their beds, the staff having fled in fear of the virus.

Even in Germany, the Red Cross says care homes across the country are suffering from a lack of protective clothing and disinfectant, which is contributing to the spread of the virus. Prosecutors in the northern city of Wolfsburg are investigating a care home on charges of death through negligence.

At the same time, only 0.4 per cent of care home residents in Germany have died of COVID-19. In England and Wales, the figure is 5.3 per cent, according to research from the London School of Economics. In other words, care home residents are 13 times more likely to die in England than in Germany.

Across Europe, said the Irish Times, the toll of coronavirus was worsened by structural weaknesses in elderly care, which had become a “fragmented and peripheral sector” overlooked in the initial scramble to save hospitals. “From Italy to Sweden, working conditions made it hard to stop the spread of the disease.”

As the American news network CNN put it: “The world sacrificed its elderly in the race to protect hospitals. The result was a catastrophe in care homes.”

‘Don’t waste this crisis’

Slowly but emphatically, the clamour for fundamental reform of elderly care is growing across the western world.

The UK has 12 million people aged 65 and over, according to the last census. In England and Wales, nearly 300,000 of them live in care homes.

Dr Joan Costa-Font, a health policy specialist at the London School of Economics, believes the COVID-19 crisis reveals how little we value old age. “The under-funded system of long-term care services has turned nursing homes into ‘death homes’. And when faced with the need of critical health care, they have been given a lower priority. Yet, given that older individuals are an increasing share of our society, and that other pandemics are to come, we are left with the question: should countries revisit their priorities?”

For Bethany Brown, researcher in older people’s rights at Human Rights Watch in New York, the answer is an emphatic: Yes. She told openDemocracy the COVID pandemic had laid bare an everyday ageism that often goes unrecognised. “It’s in the air in off-hand comments such as: Culling the elderly can be good for the bottom line of the economy!” However, she believes this is a defining moment for policy makers around the world to make a change. “There’s a real opportunity to be grasped and I’m encouraged by networks and organisations throughout Europe and the developing world who say, ‘Hang on! Older people have the same rights. They shouldn’t be cast aside.’ I hope we don’t waste this crisis.”

Anna Dixon, CEO of Britain’s Centre for Better Ageing, agreed: “COVID has provided a catalyst for positive radical change that perhaps was not thought possible before and has perhaps shone a spotlight on the terrible state of our social care system. We hope that will galvanise change.”

“If any good is to come from this, we must use this as a moment to resolve once and for all how to properly resource and reform the way social care works in this country.”

Sir Simon added: “I would hope by the time we are sitting down this time next year on the 73rd birthday of the NHS that we have actually, as a country, been able to decisively answer the question of how are going to fund and provide high-quality social care for my parents’ generation.”

Such an outcome would be cherished by Cathy Gardner and Fay Harris. As their lawyer, Paul Conrathe, put it: “This casts a light on dark corners. It will expose the lack of priority and planning given to the care sector and the need for a more proactive strategic approach in future to protect the most vulnerable.”