Statement on vaccination programme

We know many residents and their families will have questions about the roll-out of the vaccination programme. This is all we know at the moment:

"We welcome the extremely good news that this vaccine has been approved but we urgently need communication from the government about how it will be rolled out to our residents and staff, and the situation on care home visiting in the meantime. Timing, transportation and administration of the vaccine all need to be sorted out. At the moment care homes are in the dark. "Yesterday the Department of Health and Social Care announced that all care homes must offer indoor face to face visits using rapid tests but our local council has rightly advised against this because they can't be assured of the tests' accuracy.

"We're lucky at Palms Row because we have visitor pods at our care homes for garden visits but until we have the vaccine or reliable tests we will not be allowing visits inside our homes. This sadly means that our residents and their loved ones will not be reunited until it is resolved.

"Once again the national government has made an announcement before taking the challenges of the front line into account. "We've also been crying out for funding support to manage the extra resource needed for this period and help with insurance for care homes, many of which have found that they are either not covered for coronavirus or their premiums have soared." Nicola Richards, Director of Palms Row Health Care