‘Lessons can be learned’ from care home lockdowns

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PIKSEL/Getty Images. A stock photo of an older woman waving at a younger woman through the window of a care home. They are both wearing medical face masks. The older woman has short, curly white hair and is wearing a beige jumper. The younger woman has blonde hair tied back and is wearing a light brown hooded coat. PIKSEL/Getty Images.

Many families could only see their loved ones through care home windows at the height of the pandemic as authorities tried to prevent the virus spreading

Marie-Louise Connolly and Aileen Moynagh

BBC News NI health unit

Locking down care homes to protect residents from Covid was “one of the most difficult decisions” that had to be made throughout the pandemic, Northern Ireland’s former commissioner for older people has told the UK Covid Inquiry.

Eddie Lynch said his office heard distressing stories from families about loved ones whose conditions deteriorated due to not receiving family visits.

He said he hoped lessons can be learned and that concrete changes can be made to how care homes will cope in the case of a future pandemic.

The inquiry, sitting in London, is examining the impact of the pandemic on social care including people who lived in care homes and those receiving domiciliary care at home.

Visitor ban consequences ‘more serious than we initially expected’

“I was aware of the impact that this was going to have on people, but at that stage it seemed like people’s right to protect their lives trumped everything else,” Mr Lynch said.

He told the inquiry that he had supported the visiting policy following advice from experts that fewer people going in and out of care homes from the community would reduce the risk for people in those care home settings.

But he said that after a period of time he realised that the negative side of that policy was “very serious and probably more serious than we initially expected”.

“It was clear to me that for many older people that that system meant that they didn’t see family members face to face for the last weeks or months of their lives.

“It was a very awful position to be in and I think in the future we need to weigh up the risk associated with contracting the virus and putting in place measures that allows continued social contact and direct human contact with family members,” he added.

Mr Lynch said that in those early stages of the pandemic care homes were in the firing line and it felt greater attention was being given to hospitals instead of care homes, when the care homes were clearly “more vulnerable”.

Liam McBurney/PA Wire Eddie Lynch, the former commissioner for older people for Northern Ireland, pictured during an earlier hearing in the UK Covid-19 Inquiry last year. He has short, reddish brown hair and a greying beard. He is wearing a black suit, a white shirt and a red tie. He is standing against a navy blue banner which shows the inquiry's pink and white logo. Liam McBurney/PA Wire

Eddie Lynch served eight years as Northern Ireland’s commissioner for older people until he stepped down in December 2024

In March 2020, 23% of the population in Northern Ireland were older people, which is defined as those aged 60 years and over.

The former commissioner said from the outset of the pandemic he reminded officials that everyone needed to stop referring to care homes as buildings but instead as people’s homes.

The inquiry is examining how Northern Ireland dealt with personal protective equipment (PPE), testing and tracing the infection, discharge policy and visiting.

Mr Lynch said that in many of these areas “Northern Ireland played catch up” and testing could have been introduced at an earlier stage, but instead there was a feeling of “push back.”

He said, within the first couple of months, they knew the “devastating impact” the pandemic was having on care homes.

He told the inquiry that experts were telling him that testing and tracing the virus was “critical” for care homes to get a handle on it, but that he felt testing was “far too slow in coming”.

Testing ‘could have been done weeks earlier’

Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images A lateral flow Covid test is processed in a lab in Portsmouth, England, on 22 February, 2021. in a close up, a man wearing blue medical gloves squeezes droplets into a small plastic test tube on a plastic rack Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

Mr Lynch claimed Covid testing could have been introduced and ramped up earlier to protect care home residents

When a testing programme was introduced by the Department of Health which became regular, Mr Lynch said he had ” deep frustration” at the speed of that and what he saw was “a lack of urgency about how important that was in response to the pandemic”.

Mr Lynch claimed testing could have been introduced and ramped up earlier and that while resources may have been one of the issues, he did not believe it was entirely about resources.

He said in the early stages there did not seem to be “a huge appetite” for testing, particularly in care home settings and that the roll out of testing could have been done weeks earlier.

Mr Lynch told the inquiry that the weaknesses of the social care sector for older people were “horribly exposed at the outset of the pandemic”.

He said that the pandemic had a devastating impact on older people and those with underlying health care problems who were at most risk.

“The nature of the virus was difficult to control once it got into those settings, ” Mr Lynch said.

When asked about draft guidance that was issued by the DOH on 16 March 2020, Mr Lynch said the guidance was limited and there was little opportunity for others to influence it.

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