There has been much talk on the news that the problem of coronavirus within care homes is quite a big one, how big exactly is the problem?
As a care home ourselves, we wanted to find out, so we set about trying to track down some quantifiable evidence on the subject.
The truth was quite disturbing and alarming, and came as a real shock to us when we read the results.
We have been fortunate enough not to have any deaths due to coronavirus here at our care home.
But it seems that not everyone has been as lucky as us.
According to the latest figures, care homes account for almost one sixth of coronavirus deaths in England and Wales.
It is very difficult to obtain an exact figure, and there are a number of factors that come into play when trying to determine a figure.
Perhaps the biggest difficulty is the two-week time lag for the data that is being collected.
This means that the most recent figures for deaths occurring in care homes are from mid April.
At this period, there was around 3000 deaths from coronavirus recorded in care homes.
This equates to around 16% of all coronavirus deaths, which is a huge proportion considering that care homes only make up less than 1% of the countries total population.
The worst bit about all of this is that the death rate is still rising, and the two week delay makes it all the more worrying.
The problem is that most care homes in the UK are private, which means that there is no official data on the exact number of residents across the UK.
It is also very hard to determine how many people receive some kind of care in their own homes from carers and helpers.
There is a real concern that the workers that visit these people are prime spreaders of the virus, since they come into contact with around 20 people a day.