Covid’s first wave was deadliest of the three in UK care homes, figures show

The virus was involved in the deaths of 19,783 residents between March and September 2020, accounting for 23.2% of fatalities across the period, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Hospitals were condemned for discharging so many untested elderly patients back into care homes at the start of the pandemic in a bid to free up beds (Photo: Getty/Hugh Hastings)

By Paul Gallagher
Health Correspondent
February 28, 2022 8:02 pm

The first wave of the pandemic was the most fatal of the three in care homes in England, figures suggest, with Covid-19 involved in the deaths of almost 20,000 residents between March and September 2020.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been 274,063 deaths of care home residents registered in England and Wales, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Of these, 45,632 involved Covid accounting for 16.7 per cent of all deaths of care home residents.

Total deaths of care home residents in England increased by 16.5 per cent between the first and second waves of the pandemic and decreased by 23.9 per cent between the second and third waves.

The proportion of deaths involving Covid was highest in the first wave when 19,783 residents died (23.2 per cent) and lowest in the third wave (2,707 – 3.6 per cent).

In July 2020, a group of MPs said the decision to allow hospital patients in England to be discharged to care homes without Covid-19 tests at the start of the pandemic was “reckless”.

The Public Accounts Committee said there had clearly been an “emerging problem” with official advice before it was “belatedly” changed in April that year and accused ministers of being slow to support social care during the crisis Around 25,000 patients were discharged into care homes in England between mid-March and mid-April 2020 to free up hospital beds.

There have been 45,632 deaths involving Covid of people living in care since the pandemic began, according to the data. The ONS said the term “involving Covid” referred to deaths in which Covid was listed anywhere on the death certificate – not just deaths where the virus was found to be a cause.

The first wave was defined as deaths registered from 14 March 2020 to 11 September 2020, while the second ran from 12 September that year to 11 June 2021. The third wave was from 12 June 2021 to 21 January 2022.

In England, the number of deaths also shot up 43.9 per cent higher than the five-year average in the first wave, but was lower in the second and third waves.

In Wales, the sharpest rise in Covid deaths was registered in the first wave but overall a higher proportion of deaths involved Covid in the second wave.

In both England and Wales, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease was the leading cause of death across all waves, except for male care home residents in the first wave in England where Covid was the leading cause of death (24.8 per cent). Covid was not one of the top three leading causes of death for care home residents in the third wave.

Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director at Age UK, said: “These statistics bring back painful memories of just how appalling the toll of death and serious illness was in care homes during the first Covid wave. There’s no doubt that as a country we were unprepared to cope with that scale of Sars-like infection, and during the early months of the pandemic policymakers did not know enough about what care homes do and who they help.”

She added: “As time went on there was much greater appreciation by Government, the NHS and others of how to protect care homes from Covid, and more tools became available to deal with it too, including PPE, testing and vaccination. However, we must never forget the lives that were lost in care homes during that first, terrible wave, and when the inquiry into the pandemic gets underway a key question must be how we can avoid anything so terrible ever happening again.”