Whatever it takes

The original assumptions in planning for COVID-19 in the UK were that a very large number of people would get it. It was known at that time that it was deadly for many older and disabled people. Presumably the plan was to keep older and disabled people, particularly hundreds of thousands of older people who receive social care, safe from infection. That could only ever have been done through a massive programme of safety equipment (PPE) and testing. That we are still playing catch-up on PPE and only a tiny number of the people who care for older and disabled people have been tested, gives the impression that as a nation we have abandoned a whole section of society to this illness. Nearly 1,000 people a day are dying in hospital, but we don’t even know how many are dying in care homes – don’t they count?

The government has, quite rightly, said it will do ‘whatever it takes’ to keep the NHS going through COVID-19. This isn’t just a message from Health ministers but from the Chancellor and the PM. We have not yet heard ‘whatever it takes’ to keep social care going. Put another way, we need the government to say, from the top down, ‘We will do whatever it takes to keep older and disabled people alive’.