Somerset care home staff continue working with Covid
Notwithstanding the impact of Community Catalysts and Community Council for Somerset, who have made huge inroads into the supply of care workers in a deep rural setting, the pressure on rural communities to manage adult social care reflects itself in contemporary stories like this. It tells us:
Some care homes have “no choice” but to allow workers who have Covid to deliver care, a public health official said.
According to Public Health England cases are rising the fastest in Somerset.
As a result, care homes in the county are struggling to safely staff their services and schools are seeing a rise in staff sickness.
Somerset Council said ensuring vulnerable residents received care was “lower risk” than them being infected.
Health officials advised care workers to continue working only if they wore PPE and felt well enough.
Council public health consultant Alison Bell said: “In some cases, we have no choice but to have people who are testing positive delivering care to people in Somerset.
“That risk is actually less than that person not receiving care.”
She said the Omicron variant was more transmissible and people were getting re-infected with it, some within a matter of weeks.
“The knock-on effect of there being so much Covid is that workers that we really need to deliver essential services are getting sick,” Ms Bell added.
She said some schools in the county had had to go to remote learning due to an increase in staff sickness.
“Its really difficult to manage at the moment,” she added.