Coronavirus outbreaks in care homes have surged by 30% in the last week, data published by Public Health England have suggested.
The most recent statistics show 442 acute respiratory infection (ARRI) incidents – that is, two or more confirmed cases linked to a particular place or event – in care home settings in the past week. A week earlier, the figure stood at 340 incidents.
In total, 1,226 new ARI incidents have been reported – up from 1,184 a week earlier, representing an increase of almost 4%.
Some places were seeing a decline. Educational settings recorded 188 incidents compared to 219 a week earlier.
The data don’t account for every infection – only places where ARRI “outbreaks” were declared, meaning two or more people are infected in the same place at the same time.
For example, as FullFact explains, if someone contracted coronavirus in a restaurant and then spread it in a school, it could have been counted as a school outbreak – the restaurant transmission wouldn’t be recorded.
Care homes were a hotspot during the first wave of the outbreak in the UK despite claims by the government it had put a “protective ring” around the sector.
Deaths of people in care homes with Covid-19 symptoms hit a four-month high at the end of October, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
In its latest weekly release, the ONS said there were 168 Covid-19 related deaths in care homes in England and Wales in the week ending 30 October – the highest level since the beginning of July.
There have been 16,140 Covid-related deaths in care homes in England and Wales this year to date.
On Thursday, the government said that, as of 9am, there had been a further 33,470 lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK, the highest daily figure recorded since the outbreak began.
It brings the total number of cases in the UK to 1,290,195.
Experts have previously warned that describing the daily figure as a record could be “misleading” as it is not clear how many people were actually infected during the height of the first wave, due to a significant lack of community testing at the time.