As of 26 May 2020 GCC had been notified of 79 care home settings where there was one or more suspected or confirmed Covid-19 cases. Table 1 shows the breakdown of notifications by district level, with the most notifications occurring in Cheltenham and Gloucester.

Table 1: Notifications of Covid-19 in care home settings, by district****

	Total number of care homes with a suspected or confirmed outbreak	Total number of care homes	Proportion of care homes in a District that have a suspected or confirmed outbreak
Cheltenham	20	40	50.0%
Cotswold	10	18	55.6%
Forest of Dean	8	40	20.0%
Gloucester	21	53	39.6%
Stroud	9	48	18.8%
Tewkesbury	11	19	57.9%
Gloucestershire	79	218	36.2%

Covid-19 deaths

CQC publish figures on deaths where Covid-19 was suspected in the notification from the care home, as well as all cause mortality (since 10 April 2020).

(n.b: It is probable that not all deaths due to Covid-19 will be notified as such, conversely Covid-19 may be mentioned but not have been a contributory factor in a death)

Sadly between 10 April and 22 May there were 211 Covid-19 suspected deaths notified from care homes in Gloucestershire, with a total of 389 deaths from all causes notified. There has been a decline in care home deaths since the week ending 24 April 2020.

While CQC numbers are more comprehensive than local reporting, they are not currently reported by district council. Table 2 uses local and PHE notifications of deaths in care homes which are available by district, however these numbers are lower than CQC reported figures as not all deaths are reported by this route. As of 26 May 2020 there were 65 deaths of care home residents who were suspected to have Covid-19 notified to GCC locally (none since last report), however we do not have information at this time as to whether Covid-19 was a contributory factor in each of these deaths.

There is variation in the number of care homes, number of residents and complexity of care (acuity) for residents between districts. The table below shows the rate of deaths per care home bed per district. However this does not take into account acuity of residents or differences in Covid-19 outbreaks between areas. As noted above this does not include information on all deaths or any differences in reporting Covid-19/non Covid-19 between areas. In addition it is worth noting that the number involved are small.

Table 2: Deaths of care home residents who were suspected to have Covid-19, by district

	Deaths of care home residents who were suspected to have Covid-19	Care home beds	Rate per 1000 care home beds
Cheltenham	30	1,395	21.5
Cotswold	<5	899	n/a
Forest of Dean	<5	714	n/a
Gloucester	12	1,200	10.0
Stroud	7	1,530	6.1
Tewkesbury	12	590	20.3
Gloucestershire	65	5,951	10.9

The county hub continues to accept requests for residents in need of food parcels and passes these on to volunteers - until this week these have been supplied in Gloucester by the city funded food consortium. As this has now ended how is this need to be supplied other than by an already overstretched charity sector? Is it possible for the hub to make referrals directly to local foodbanks or via the shielded provision?

The Help Hub continues to be in operation and one of the pre-coded fields of help is ‘making sure I have enough food and other general supplies to cover a few days’. The majority of people who tick this box need access to food (ie someone doing their shopping) as opposed to food itself.

Districts are receiving very few requests for the provision of food (as opposed to access to food) and are able to meet these through local arrangements, including making use of the additional grant funding through the county council; and through referrals to foodbanks where appropriate.

The county wide Help Hub is a triage service only. All requests are channeled to district councils. It does not make any direct referrals to other organisations/institutions.

*The above data reflects nationally published data available here.

**This section contains information on deaths of patients who have died in hospitals in Gloucestershire and had tested positive for Covid-19 at time of death or where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate. All deaths are recorded against the date of death rather than the date the deaths were announced. It is based on national NHS data published here.

The data in this briefing is updated at 9am each day based on the figures released at 2pm the previous day.

***Weekly death figures provide provisional counts of the number of deaths registered in England and Wales for which data are available. From 31 March 2020 these figures also show the number of deaths involving coronavirus (COVID-19), based on any mention of COVID-19 on the death certificate. The number includes deaths that occurred up to 15 May but were registered up to 23 May. Figures by place of death may differ to previously published figures due to improvements in the way we code place of death. This figure does not include deaths of those resident outside England and Wales or those records where the place of residence is either missing or not yet fully coded. For this reason counts may differ to published figures when summed. Bank Holidays could affect the number of registrations made within those weeks.

****Case data is based on cases reported to PHE by diagnostic laboratories, and matched to ONS administrative geography codes and names to generate geographic case counts. The number of confirmed cases under-represents the likely total number of Covid-19 cases in Gloucestershire. There may be some minor fluctuations in the daily number of cases due to laboratory reporting delays.

Care homes vary in size and in the characteristics of their residents. Outbreak data is also being reported publicly here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/covid-19-number-of-outbreaks-in-care-homes-management-information. The figures here are slightly lower than our local figures due to a time lag. The number of cases (confirmed of suspected) has not been reported due to limitations in data accuracy which means comparison is not possible. This information is being used for operational purposes. As testing in care homes increases we will review whether adding this information will add additional strategic insight.