As the Government relaxes its COVID guidance on the next step of the roadmap out of lockdown, Bolton Council and its partners are urging people to act with extra caution, especially when visiting care home residents.
Despite the easing of restrictions there are rising COVID variants of concern in Bolton and people must minimise the risk of transmission by following the guidelines and being ultra cautious when visiting care homes in the borough.
The easing of restrictions to care home visits takes place from May 17 but these may be removed if the COVID cases are not kept under control.
The revised guidance allows care home residents to have up to five regular visitors, with up to 2 visitors at one time or in a single day.
Locally we are recommending that care homes do not implement this revised guidance and stay with the 2 nominated visitors to have close contact visits until we are confident locally that the peak of the current outbreak has passed.
Visitors to care homes will need to have tested negative for COVID-19 before they come inside and follow the rules on how to prevent infection from spreading.
The provision for outdoor, pod, screen and window visits can continue under the same rules in place during lockdown, meaning residents can see more than just the people they nominate.
Visits should be booked in advance and ad hoc or unannounced visits will not be possible although there is flexibility in exceptional circumstances such as end of life care should always be enabled.
While visits can involve children this should be carefully considered by the family and planned and agreed with the care home in advance. Also, any children visiting will count towards the maximum number allowed for the visit (apart from babies and very young children - generally a child under the age of 2) and close physical contact between babies or young children and the residents they are visiting is to be avoided.
Individual care homes may choose to introduce additional precautions to keep residents and staff safe and visiting may be suspended for 28 days if there are local outbreaks at individual homes.
When visiting resumes the usual infection prevention and control measures and any enhancements required due to any risks identified following the recent outbreak will need to be followed.
Cllr Andy Morgan, Executive Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care, said: “The pandemic has put a tragic limit on the contact that care home residents have had with their families.
“Whilst trying to protect our most vulnerable from the devastating consequences of the virus, we have always been mindful of the effects that a lack of contact with friends and family can have.
“That said many of the borough’s care homes are now providing innovative pod and window visits which has certainly helped the situation.
“On behalf of everyone in our borough I would like to thank care home staff for what they are doing to keep their residents safe and happy and family members for their understanding.
“We will continue working with our care homes to ensure that they are able to support visiting of loved ones in the safest way but until such time as we are assured that all measures are in place to facilitate increased close contact visiting we also advise care homes to continue with the current visiting arrangements and to also facilitate visiting pod and window visits, along with the use of technology such as Zoom calls and Facetime to keep the residents in touch with their families.
“Only when we are confident that the current covid outbreak has peaked will we announce when it is appropriate to increase the number of nominated visitors from 2 to 5 for close contact visiting.”
With restrictions easing everyone is asked to help keep Bolton safe and get tested, vaccinated and self-isolate if required to do so.
You can read more about how Bolton is responding to rising COVID rates and what we can all do to help.
For more information and help visit www.bolton.gov.uk.