Matt Hancock announced the UK Government will be publishing figures on coronavirus deaths from care homes and the community as well as hospitals. The Health Secretary said the new plan is to be as transparent as possible with the British public. It comes as a total of 21,678 patients had died in hospital after testing positive for coronavirus in the UK as of 5pm on Monday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said, up by 586 from 21,092 the day before.
Speaking in Downing Street, Mr Hancock said: "The proportion of coronavirus deaths in care homes is around a sixth of the total which is just below what we see in normal times.
"I want to make sure we bring as much transparency as possible to important information like this.
"From tomorrow, we'll be publishing, not just the number of deaths in hospitals each day but the number of deaths in care homes and the community too.
"This is something that wasn't previously possible."
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Mr Hancock also said the government was on track to meet its 100,000 test per day target by the end of the month, and that by the end of the week the number of home test kits available each day would rise to 25,000 from 5,000.
The coronavirus testing scheme will be opened up to a much wider pool of people including those over the age of 65 with symptoms, and all care home residents.
The Health Secretary added: "Anyone who is working or living in a care home will be able to get access to a test whether they have symptoms, or not.
"I'm determined to do everything I can to protect the most vulnerable."
Later in the press briefing, Mr Hancock said it was "still too early to say" when schools might reopen.
"There are still too many deaths each day and the five tests that we set out haven't been met.
"I know, especially as a father of three young children, that there's a yearning from people to know when schools might go back and, of course, it's something that we think about and we talk about."
Responding to a question from Amanda from Hull, he said: "I'm sorry that I can't give you a more definitive answer, but I can't because we don't yet have the number of deaths and the number of infections low enough for that to be safe to reopen the schools, and we don't yet know how fast the number of new cases will fall."
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He said it was "unreasonable as a question" after being asked to apologise to the bereaved relatives of coronavirus victims in care homes because of failures to protect them.
"From the start we knew that there was a very significant challenge with care homes, not least because of the frailty of the residents," the Health Secretary said.
It had been "more difficult to get data flowing" from care homes but that was now being done, he said.
Because of the risks posed by the virus to the elderly, "making sure that care homes have the support they need has been absolutely at front of mind right from the start".
"It's something that we have focused on right from the start and something that's been a huge challenge throughout and we are constantly learning from what happens and trying to improve the way that we support people across the care sector," he said.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiZmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmV4cHJlc3MuY28udWsvbmV3cy91ay8xMjc0OTUzL01hdHQtSGFuY29jay1jYXJlLWhvbWVzLWNvcm9uYXZpcnVzLWRlYXRoLXRvbGwtZGFpbHktZmlndXJlc9IBamh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmV4cHJlc3MuY28udWsvbmV3cy91ay8xMjc0OTUzL01hdHQtSGFuY29jay1jYXJlLWhvbWVzLWNvcm9uYXZpcnVzLWRlYXRoLXRvbGwtZGFpbHktZmlndXJlcy9hbXA?oc=5
2020-04-28 16:19:57Z
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