Recommendation 7

HM Government Acknowledged

6.5 Making tests available is a key part of the Government’s ongoing plan to tackle COVID-19. This relates to several contexts in adult social care: Care Homes Care homes are on the frontline in the fight against COVID-19 and we are determined that staff have everything they need to keep themselves and their residents safe. Testing is a crucial part of this; it helps prevent and control outbreaks and means steps can be taken to reduce the spread the virus. Our testing strategy for adult social care is based on scientific advice on relative priorities and available testing capacity in order to limit the spread and save lives. Testing is available for: - All CQC registered adult care homes for asymptomatic staff and residents through the whole home portal; - All patients discharged from hospital into care homes; - All individuals moving from the community into a care home; - All CQC Inspectors; - All visiting professionals to care homes; - Visitors to care homes. We are able to issue more than 520,000 tests a day to care homes across the country, prioritising high priority outbreak areas. To date, we have sent out over 20 million PCR test kits to care homes for testing all residents and asymptomatic staff. We have a target to return 90% of results for care homes within 72 hours, and we are currently communicating 87.5% of results within 72 hours, and 58.1% within 48 hours. The median turnaround time for tests is 43 hours*. The Department for Health and Social Care does not routinely publish information on the number of care home staff and residents who have been tested for COVID-19 at present, but we are exploring the feasibility of including this information as part of the NHS Test and Trace Statistics publications in the near future. *Figures above correct as of 26/01/2021 Domiciliary Care On Monday 23 November 2020, we began offering CQC registered domiciliary care organisations access to regular, weekly COVID-19 testing for their carers looking after people in their own homes. Those working for CQC registered organisations are able to access weekly PCR tests to administer at home. Proactively testing asymptomatic carers helps to identify those who unknowingly have the virus and enables those who test positive and their contacts to self- isolate. This is crucial to break the chains of transmission of the virus. Extra Care and Supported Living Following the rollout of a single round of national testing to the most high-risk extra care and supported living settings, we have now launched regular retesting. Weekly testing for staff and monthly for residents. To be eligible settings must meet both of the following criteria: A closed community with substantial facilities shared between multiple people, and; Where most residents receive the kind of personal care that is CQC regulated (rather than help with cooking, cleaning and shopping); These criteria were set, in consultation with the sector, to identify settings most similar to care homes, where the risk of transmission and outbreak is high, and the impact on service users may be high. Eligible settings can get access to testing either through a referral from their Local Authority or through our self-referral portal. The self-referral portal is supporting us in identifying more settings, reducing the burden on Local Authorities, and extending testing to more people. Care Home Visitor Testing Receiving visitors is a very important part of care home life. Maintaining some opportunities for visiting to take place is critical for supporting the health and wellbeing of residents and their relationships with friends and family. In December 2020, we launched care home visitor testing. The launch of visitor testing was a crucial step to making that happen. We distributed rapid (lateral flow) tests to care homes across the country to be used for visitors. Welcoming people into care homes from the community inevitably brings infection risk. In light of the new variant and rising prevalence, a national lockdown was announced on 4th January 2020. Under this national lockdown close contact visiting is not permitted. However, when national lockdown comes to an end, we will review care home visiting policy and look to open up more opportunities for visiting when it is safe to do so. These distributed tests can be used to test staff under the increased testing regime as outlined in guidance published on the 23rd December as well as for all visiting professionals who are not part of another regular testing regime. CQC Inspectors Now that testing capacity has significantly expanded, we have provided CQC with regular asymptomatic testing for CQC inspectors. This will help identify positive cases in CQC inspectors without symptoms and enable action to be taken to limit the spread of the virus, supporting CQC inspectors to continue their vital work in ensuring services meet fundamental standards of quality and safety.