The association between the discharge of patients from hospitals and COVID in care homes
A consensus statement from the Social Care Working Group to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).
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In summer 2020, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) recommended a review be undertaken of which care homes took discharged patients and how many went on to have COVID-19 outbreaks.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) commissioned a consensus statement on the impact of hospital discharge from the Social Care Working Group (SCWG) in November 2020 to take into account work already undertaken by NHS England (NHSE), Public Health England (PHE) and any relevant analysis from the devolved administrations.
In July 2021, DHSC also asked for the report to cover Public Health England, Public Health Wales, Public Health Scotland and Department of Health Northern Ireland studies.
The report was written on 3 December 2021. It found that at least some care home outbreaks were caused or partly caused or intensified by discharges from hospital.
However, based on the very much larger associations between care home size and outbreaks, hospital discharge does not appear to have been the dominant way in which COVID-19 entered care homes.