Former health secretary Matt Hancock has blamed Public Health England (PHE) for failing to alert him to asymptomatic transmission of Covid after a court ruled that the government policy of discharging patients to care homes during the early stages of the pandemic was unlawful.

In a ruling on Wednesday, Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Garnham concluded that policies contained in documents released in March and early April 2020 were unlawful because they failed to take into account the risk to elderly and vulnerable residents from non-symptomatic transmission of the virus.

They also said that, despite there being “growing awareness” of the risk of asymptomatic transmission throughout March 2020, there was no evidence that the then-health secretary addressed the issue of the risk to care home residents of such transmission.

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.

Some people living in rural areas are being left without home care packages because providers say they can’t recruit enough staff or afford high mileage costs.

More than 80 eligible people in Cornwall currently have no council-funded care, Cornwall Council says.

The authority says it cannot afford to pay more to providers.

Phil Hartley, owner of Hartley Home Care, provides services in Cornwall and Devon, where he says the council pays more for remote carers.

“Devon recognise the cost implications of providing rural care and they now pay a differential rate which is significant – a difference of nearly £4 an hour,” he said.

“Whereas in Cornwall there is no differential rate.”

Cornwall Council said it does not have “the scale of urban conurbations that Devon has so our contract price reflects the rural nature of Cornwall”.

The council added that it works with homecare companies to provide more than 2,800 care packages across Cornwall, and pays the Foundation Living Wage for staff, covering travel times and training.

The government says it’s giving councils more than £1 billion of ringfenced money for social care next year.

Care home staff have expressed growing anxiety about a rise in hospitalisations and deaths among their most vulnerable residents, after leaked documents from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) revealed an increase in the number of coronavirus cases in England.

The UK is experiencing a sharp rise in the number of positive cases, with 3,497 new cases reported on Saturday and an “R” number – the average number of people infected by each person with Covid – above 1 for the first time since March. Data shows the R number for England could be as high as 1.7, with prevalence of the virus doubling every 7-8 days.

While this is at its highest among younger adults, experts have warned the virus could spread to more vulnerable populations – as is happening in France. There are signs that hospital admissions have already started to rise in the UK

The number of care home residents who have died from coronavirus could be more than five times the government’s estimate, the sector’s main charity has warned.

Care England, Britain’s largest representative body for care homes, told the Daily Telegraph that up to 7,500 care home residents may have died of the virus.

This is significantly higher than the figure of 1,400 people estimated to have died by the government earlier this week.

“Without testing, it is very difficult to give an absolute figure,” Martin Green, the chief executive of Care England, said. “However, if we look at some of the death rates since 1 April and compare them with previous years’ rates, we estimate a figure of about 7,500 people may have died as a result of Covid-19.”

The figure is also significantly higher than the 217 care home deaths recorded in the latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which runs up to 3 April.

The official death toll in Britain topped 15,000 on Saturday, but this only includes data recorded in hospitals. This data can take some days to register, and does not include deaths in the community, such as those occurring in care homes.

The care home industry is in an even worse financial state than feared after a revision of government data revealed that nearly 100 more such businesses than previously thought have collapsed since 2010.

The release of the figures has heightened calls for Philip Hammond, the chancellor, to offer financial support to care homes in the autumn statement.

A total of 380 care home businesses have been declared insolvent since 2010. This is 98 more than previously thought after the Insolvency Service revised its figures to show that the number of insolvencies between 2010 and 2013 was nearly double the previously stated number – 212 up from 114. The Insolvency Service said this was due to an “error in data processing” that saw the residential care home businesses classified as “social work activities without accommodation”.

This article explains how Southern Cross, which supports 30,000 people in its homes, is now in a very parlous financial state. How vulnerable are the homes in your area to the economic downturn and does your council have a “Plan B” should they begin to fail?