coronavirus Archives - Abbeyfield Bognor

More Coronavirus News

Here at Abbeyfield we have been watching the coronavirus situation unfold very carefully, as we are well away of how this global pandemic can affect us and our residents.

Care homes are particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus spread, not only because we have lots of elderly people staying with us, but also because of the number of people who come and go to these places.

On average we have close to 100 visitors everyday. These people can range from family members who are visiting people in the care home, nurses and doctors who are treating patients to delivery people dropping of essential items like medicine and food.

With all of this coming and going, we have to be very careful of how we control the situation to make sure we do not get any of our residents sick with the virus.

We have ben watching the figures very carefully, and the most recent stats are actually very alarming indeed.

The death toll is likely to reach around 60,000 people in the UK from coronavirus, and of this number, 34,000 are expected to be from care home residents.

This is over 50%, which is an astonishing number and one that were are very worried about.

We have decided to keep our measures very tight in our home, even as the countries lockdown policies lift.

We have put in a number of no contact measure in our home, including:

No contact hand offs with delivery people
Essential deliveries only
Essential doctor and nurse call outs only
Ongoing testing is in place for all residents and staff to make sure that if anyone does have the virus that we can contain it properly
We have increased our daily cleaning routine to over double the original cleaning, which was already very extensive
Making sure our ventilation systems are working and ensuring a fresh supply of air into the building at all times

Our Electrician Glasgow Story

by Abbeyfield Bognor Care Homes

The coronavirus has meant a great deal of change and uncertainty to not just the country, but the whole world. It has changed our everyday lives in so many ways, affecting everything from our exercise to our shopping, and everything in between. We here at Abbeyfield have undergone a number of challenges during the coronavirus, from the expected to the unexpected. We have had to take drastic measures to ensure the safety of our staff and of course our residents. It seems that care homes are particularly vulnerable during the coronavirus outbreak, and the figures are showing an alarming number of people who contract the virus are in care homes. On top of these safety measures, we also needed some electrical work done on our emergency alarm system, and managed to get the only electrician Glasgow had at the time to come down from Scotland.

The Last Electrician Glasgow Had

We had been in the middle of some important cleaning when our emergency alarm system went off. Our team of nurses rushed to find where it was coming from, which is indicated by a light above the room that is calling it. The problem was, none of the lights were going off, and after a full sweep of the care home, we found no alarm had been triggered. This mean that there was a fault in the system, and it also meant that the alarm continued to go off for the next few hours. The problem was, we couldn’t turn it off as then we would have no indication of an emergency, and leaving it on meant a horrible alarm that wouldn’t let us hear if a new alarm was triggered. We had to keep an eye on all the lights the rest of the day to make sure that there were no problems, and we had to get a specialist electrician Glasgow had that was able to come the next day.

12 Hours Later

During the night we had managed to deactivate the siren while keeping the lights functional, which was far from ideal but allowed the staff and residents to get some peace and quiet. The next day the specialist electrician arrived, and we were able to find out what had caused it. Turns out it was something very technical and boring, but all we cared about was that it was fixed. We thanked him for coming of short notice and during these troublesome times and he went on his way.

Coronavirus Measures

The technician was very sympathetic to our situation and also took measures to ensure the safety of himself and of the residents. The problems that were are facing because of the pandemic outbreak can all be made a little bit easier if everyone comes together to do their bit, whether this is staying at home or being careful when they are out and about. Essential workers such as the electrician that visited us are doing great work, and they have to be especially careful if thy visit a high risk place such as ours. We are pleased to report that so far we have not had any problems or cases at our care home.

Care Homes During Corona

by Abbeyfield Bognor Care Homes

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.