More than third of care home residents caught Covid in early waves of pandemic - Mirage News

More than a third of care home residents and a quarter of care home staff in England showed evidence of infection with SARS-CoV-2 during the first two waves of the pandemic, according to a new study led by UCL researchers.

The study, published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity, looked at blood samples from nearly 5,000 residents (with a median age of 87) and staff (with a median age of 48) at 201 care homes across England between June 2020 and May 2021.

The researchers found that 34.6% of residents and 26.1% of staff tested positive for the nucleocapsid antibody, which indicates prior SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Lead author Dr Maria Krutikov (UCL Institute of Health Informatics) said: “Our study shows the prevalence of Covid-19 in care homes was much higher than in the general population in England up until May this year.

In the period we looked at, before the Delta variant became dominant in the UK, the proportion of care home residents with evidence of previous infection with SARS-CoV-2 was more than double that of the general population.”.