Residential homes in Atherstone shut their doors to 'all visitors' in response to coronavirus outbreak in town

Care facilities in Atherstone reacting to the town's first confirmed coronavirus case have moved into a "protection" phase – with some closing their doors to all visitors.

National award-winning residential home Merevale House and Bentley House Care Centre both took the decision to turn away relatives and friends from their establishments on learning the situation from Nub News yesterday.

They placed the highest "priority" on their residents after Atherstone Surgery said GPs Scott Thomson and Rachael Davies and a female medical centre administrator were self-isolating at home following the news one of its patients had tested positive for the Covid-19 virus. A second patient is awaiting results.

Some 373 people have tested positive for Covid-19 in the UK, up from 319 at the same point on Monday, and six people have died in British hospitals.

Merevale House informed relatives and posted a statement on its Facebook account explaining its stance over the town's confirmed coronavirus case at the Ratcliffe Road medical centre.

The statement from the home, which has won an array of awards for innovation and best practice as well as winning global recognition at a G8 summit discussion on dementia during David Cameron's time as UK prime minister, read: "Merevale House owners and management have taken the decision to close to all visitors for the foreseeable future. Thank you for your support with this."

Michelle Mariner, registered manager at the Bentley residential home, told Nub News its "closed to visitors" reaction was intended to "reduce footfall".

She said: "Our priority is the residents. Health professionals will continue to come into the home, working under their own guidelines.

"Otherwise it's business as usual."

Asked how long the measures would be in place, she added: "This will continue as long as it needs to be."

The Bracebridge Court home in Friary Road, Atherstone, is monitoring the situation with an ongoing safety assessment for its 66-resident capacity establishment.

A spokeswoman said it was "dissuading" people from visiting if they have a cold or cough and hand washing or sanitising is a condition of entry.

Across the UK, people with "minor" cold, flu or fever symptoms could soon to be asked to stay at home in self-isolation in a bid to tackle the coronavirus outbreak, while new Government advice has warned against all but essential travel to Italy as the number of dead there rose to 463.

England's chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty pointed to tighter measures aimed at protecting the public, particularly the vulnerable and elderly, which could be implemented in the next 10 to 14 days.

In developments on how the virus is behaving, experts have said people infected with Covid-19 could go five days without showing any symptoms.

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimated the average incubation period of the virus to be 5.1 days.

Meanwhile, official NHS guidance is to be displayed at the top of internet search results as part of measures to stop the spread of disinformation around Covid-19.

It comes as the NHS warns of the spread of misleading information around the coronavirus outbreak.

The health service has highlighted a fake account it had suspended from Twitter after it posed as a hospital and posted inaccurate information about coronavirus cases.

The account, claiming to be a hospital in Andover, Hampshire, falsely posted that it had received a number of patients with coronavirus-like symptoms before it was suspended by Twitter.

In response and as part of a new range of features for internet platforms, the health service said it had worked with Google, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram on ways to help promote "good advice" when people were searching online for information.

Nub News has published a 'What Atherstone needs to know about coronavirus' , compiled from Government-approved sources, which you can find here.