Covid-19: Care home boss moves back in with residents over outbreak fear

Christopher Dando says he still fears Covid-19 getting into his care home

A care home boss and his staff who lived with their residents for 84 days during the first lockdown have moved in again to prevent a Covid-19 outbreak.

Christopher Dando, who runs a home in Cheddar, Somerset, said to get so close to vaccination and have the virus spread would be "catastrophic".

For the second time in a year, he is leaving his family to keep his residents safe.

He said they are "sleeping, eating, living, breathing the fear of Covid".

He is testing his staff every day, more frequently than required by government guidelines.

Mr Dando said: "Most care homes I was hearing about had infections coming into the home and they were spreading really, really quickly, like wildfire.

"The transmission rate in the local community had skyrocketed. We haven't had the vaccination yet and we felt we were really vulnerable.

"To get this far and have things go wrong would have been catastrophic."

'Harder to say goodbye'

Mr Dando, who runs Court House Residential Home, predicts he will be living away from his family for many weeks and several of his staff are joining him.

The residents they care for are scheduled to get their first vaccination injections on Friday.

"It might sound like just a few days away, but we are sleeping, eating, living, breathing the fear of Covid coming into the building," said Mr Dando.

He said it was harder to say goodbye to his family compared to when he moved into Court House during the first lockdown.

"The first time we did it we were thinking it was only going to be for a couple of weeks," he said.

"In reality this time I know it's going to be six weeks. I can't see it being less than that."