ALLIANCE South Belfast MLA Paula Bradshaw has warned the Health Minister that he must put a precise timeline on testing plans in care homes. 

On Monday Robin Swann announced that Covid-19 testing will be made available to all care home residents and staff across the North.

The Minister said it is intended to complete the roll-out of testing to all residents next month. In addition, a rolling testing programme for all staff will be put in place.

However Ms Brashaw stated: “No one is suggesting the Minister has an easy job at present, but he needs to recognise that serious mistakes have been made with regard to care homes, and to rectify them with greater urgency than ‘next month’.

“It has been evident that there has been a specific issue in care homes for two months now, but we in the Alliance Party recognised the difficulty with testing capacity so we waited until 20 April, when capacity was increased via drive-through centres, to recommend to the Minister that staff in all care homes be tested urgently regardless of symptoms.

“There were 53 care home outbreaks at the time and there are now more than twice that, yet we still do not have a timescale for testing even of staff regardless of symptoms. This was a specific recommendation designed to break the chains of infection specifically by targeting those who go into and out of the care homes for testing, rather than all residents.

“The fact is this was not done, even though the capacity existed to do it, and the issue in care homes has grown as a consequence.

“The Minister needs to grasp fundamentally the need to break chains of infection and that this is done by targeting, testing and tracing. Given that people are most infectious before symptoms, it is long past time that symptoms were used for prioritisation of testing if we wish to break the chains of infection. 

“We now know considerably more about this virus and about how and where it is spread. We need to get ahead rather than constantly chasing from behind. That means taking advice from global experts, notably from places where outcomes have been better precisely because they got ahead of the virus and broke the chains of infection earlier than we did.

 “The immediate challenge to the Minister is to outline precisely when testing of staff in all care homes regardless of testing will take place, because that is where the targeting must be. We then need to hear details, not vague comments, about a comprehensive and targeted testing and tracing designed to ensure that chains of infection are broken in future, which will enable us to make sure that a return to some form of normality is not solely dependent on a vaccine.

“I share the Minister’s desire not to over-promise, but promises need to be accompanied by detail and precise timescales.”