My 95-year-old mother caught coronavirus in a care home – I’m so angry Boris Johnson still hasn’t got a grip on this scandal

My mother is now recovering, but the gulf between the rhetoric from government and reality is hard to stomach. Cases like this are being repeated all over the country

Ministers have trumpeted a fall in the number of coronavirus deaths in care homes but there is little to celebrate: more people are now dying in care homes than in hospitals. Almost 10,000 have now died from coronavirus in care homes, partly because hospitals were initially ordered to discharge up to 15,000 patients to them, whether or not they had been tested for the virus.

I’ve seen how ministers’ rhetoric is not matched by reality. On 28 April, Matt Hancock, the health and social care secretary, promised: “Anyone who is working or living in a care home will be able to get access to a test, whether they have symptoms or not.” I thought this would start immediately. But in Monday’s lockdown easing plan, the government slipped this out: “By 6 June, every care home for the over-65s will have been offered testing for residents and staff.” Note the weasel word “offered”; the government doesn’t even guarantee the tests will happen by then.

When my 95-year-old mother told me she had “the virus”, she was sure it was coronavirus but her care home and GP initially thought it was something else. My sister, brother and I hoped they were right. But ominously, several residents in the home were showing symptoms.

The home would not confirm a coronavirus outbreak. When we mentioned Hancock’s pledge on tests, the home told us it wasn’t as easy as that to get them. After days of nagging by us, the GP detected some coronavirus symptoms and our mother was admitted to hospital. She tested positive.

It was a scary time. My mum’s cough was so bad she couldn’t talk to us on the phone. We knew she needed oxygen, and dreaded the next bulletin from the hospital. Not being able to visit made it even more worrying. Thankfully, she is now recovering slowly and is back in her care home, where there is an outbreak. We are among the lucky ones; 36,000 families have not been so fortunate.

The care home where my 97-year-old mother-in-law lives has been trying to get tests for weeks. It doesn’t know when they will happen. It’s in Enfield, a London borough where a majority of the 90 care homes have had an outbreak and more than a third have suffered at least one death (at one home, 25 residents and one carer died). Only four homes have had tests so far. At another home I know outside the borough, the residents’ tests went missing; they have now been retested.

The Department for Health and Social Care said “tens of thousands” of care home residents and workers have been tested, with over 140,000 tests delivered to 4,387 care homes. Again, the words are chosen carefully. “Delivered” does not mean “carried out.”

Many care homes complain they cannot get tests. The HC-One group said it has been able to test only 3,500 of its 20,000 staff and 5,500 of its 17,000 residents. The National Care Forum, representing not-for-profit providers, found that only 22 per cent of 6,469 staff with symptoms were tested as of 5 May.

Now there’s a new threat to a sector that ministers would rather remain out of sight and out of mind: some companies running care homes could go bust, partly due to the crippling cost of personal protective equipment. One North London home has already closed; it won’t be the last.

Alok Sharma, the business secretary, illustrated how ministers don’t understand social care by suggesting at last night’s Downing Street press conference that such firms could furlough workers. The homes I know are running on empty, struggling to get enough staff at an incredibly difficult time. Carers, who are working heroically, fear the death of a resident will be followed by the arrival of a hospital patient with coronavirus.

Today the Alzheimer’s Society reported that 43 per cent of homes are still not confident of their PPE supply, with one resorting to taping bags around carers’ arms, feet and hair. A promised online delivery system for social care has not yet been rolled out nationally. Little wonder care workers are dying at about twice the rate of the general population and health workers.

Ministers have been painfully slow to help the care sector. They have belatedly woken up to the risk of agency staff working in different homes spreading the virus. This was obvious in February.

Indeed, “slow” sums up the government’s record across the piece. True, it deserves credit for building extra capacity in hospitals and for its furlough scheme, rightly extended yesterday. But it was slow to see the coronavirus threat, impose the lockdown, ensure enough testing and PPE. The “too slow” charge has been deployed by Keir Starmer. He is on to something. I think the label will stick, and damage the government when the reckoning comes.

So, I suspect, will the headline-grabbing promises that were slow to be delivered. I have watched the press conferences though a different lens since my mum became ill. Not as a political journalist, but as one of hundreds of thousands of relatives fearing for their loved ones.

I wonder how many other viewers reflect on ministers’ weasel words, and the gulf between rhetoric and reality.