The social care crisis is in need of urgent attention

Editorial: A care home, with its vulnerable residents in close proximity, was, and sadly still is, the perfect environment for Covid-19 to spread and exact an appalling human cost

Matt Hancock, the health and social care secretary, addresses the media in No 10 (PA)

The latest figures on coronavirus deaths in care homes are as shocking as they are unsurprising.

According to the Office for National Statistics, there were some 2,000 deaths in care homes in England and Wales during the week ending 17 April, double the total recorded from the beginning of the year to 10 April. The Care Quality Commission found that there were 4,343 notified deaths in care homes since Easter, and that people in care homes have made up around a sixth of total fatalities.

The government has only now announced a few remedies, including access to testing for all residents and staff of care homes, whether or not they show symptoms, as well as expanding testing to all over-65s and people who have to leave their homes for work, if they show symptoms. The daily and weekly death tolls will, from now on, include care home deaths, to help us understand the scale and transmission of the pandemic.