BUT RESIDENTIAL AND NURSING HOME BOSSES SAY GOVERNMENT 'NO HELP' IN THE FIGHT AGAINST PANDEMIC

ATHERSTONE looks like a beacon of light amid the gloom of Covid-19 deaths in UK care homes.

More than one in four coronavirus fatalities – 27.3 per cent – are care home deaths, according to the Office for National Statistics.

And new ONS figures have also revealed that pensioners are 34 times more likely to die of the virus than the under-65s – accounting for 30,978 fatalities.

Now the ONS has published the devastating effect the pandemic has had on Britain's "forgotten" area of social care – with a grim tally of 12,526 deaths in residential and nursing home facilities.

Public Health England data shows 5,546 care homes out of a total of 15,514 had confirmed or suspected outbreaks since early March in what Age UK describes as a "sancdal behind closed doors".

But Nub News has only reported one death in one Atherstone care home – against heartening stories of elderly residents beating the virus and no recorded details from others of fatalities.

The only message coming out has been one of "neglect" by Government in underestimating the severity on care homes and by authorities in having to "make our own arrangements" in obtaining proper personal protection equipment as the Prime Minister now admits a "bitter regret" the coronavirus outbreak spread like wild fire through the country's care homes, now promising £600 million to control infection in them.

Bentley House administrator Charlotte McKenna told Nub News last week [L} https://atherstone.nub.news/n/freed-in-time-to-celebrate-vc-day-the-bentley-house-2-who-survived-the-virus-war-in-victory-over-covid [L+} as we exclusively revealed[.L] Dot Passey, 87, and 90-year-old

Ron Houghton had beaten the virus after fighting it for three weeks: "We've had no help from anyone – and that includes the NHS. "In fact they've been a hindrance, trying to force us to take admissions. We resisted. The Bentley specialist nursing home sourced and bought all its own PPE equipment – visors, masks, scrubs, even a disinfectant machine which pushes out a fine spray for users. By comparison the deaths in the community – with eight in Atherstone out of a total of 24 in North Warwickshire up to April 17 – puts the town "in a league with Birmingham" for deaths per 100,000 population. Again Nubs News revealed the town ranks alongside its big city neighbour Birmingham for the worst Covid-19 mortality rate in nine local authorities which border one another. Below are the likes of Coventry, Nuneaton and Bedworth, Tamworth and Solihull – only Birmingham on 78 deaths per 100,000 is above Atherstone – on 75 per 100,000. The UK's rate of infection appeared to be slowing, with academics at the University of Cambridge reporting that the R rate was now firmly under 1.0 – a goal Boris Johnson has set in order to keep gradually releasing the lockdown in the coming months. London, according to the university's MRC Biostatistics Unit, has an R rate (a measurement of the number of people an infected person passes the disease to) of 0.4, the lowest in the country, having once been the worst affected in terms of coronavirus-related hospital admissions. The Midlands 'R' rate stands at 0.68 compared with North East and Yorkshire is around 0.8, the South West is 0.76, slightly more than the North West which has a rate of 0.73. For the Midlands it means for every 10 people who are infected, they are likely to pass it onto to just under seven people. Further updates are expected in the coming days on how the forthcoming antibody test will work. Public Health England has approved a new test from the pharmaceutical giant Roche after experts at its Porton Down facility gave it the green light. The test – which Mr Johnson has previously called a "game-changer" – picks up cases where somebody has had coronavirus in the past, and can be used on people who experienced no symptoms. Coronavirus fatalities in the UK – which rose by 428 to 33,614 yesterday – makes Britain one of the worst affected countries in the world. The number of deaths are second only to America – which has 86,912 fatalities from a reported 1.45 million confirmed cases. But the methods of counting vary across the globe and official reports of Covid-19 deaths in some Italian regions could be a "substantial underestimation" of the actual number of people to die from the disease, a study has suggested. Italy had the worst death rate in Europe until it was overtaken by the UK last week. It currently is recording a figure of 31,368 fatalities. Researchers examined the change over time in the total number of deaths – known as all-cause mortality – in Nembro, a city of around 11,500 people in Lombardy. The region in northern Italy has been one of the areas most severely affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Researchers found more Nembro residents died in March 2020 than in the entire previous year or in any single year since 2012. But they also discovered that only about half of the deaths occurring during the recent coronavirus outbreak were reported as confirmed Covid-19 deaths. Between February 21 and April 11 this year, a total of 166 deaths were recorded among residents of the city. From samples taken during the same period, 218 people later tested positive for Covid-19 – of which 85 died. The peer-reviewed study by experts at the Institute of Public Health and Charite-Universitatsmedizin Berlin, and published in the BMJ medical journal, based its findings on the monthly all-cause mortality data from Nembro between January 2012 and April 2020.