Coronavirus: Almost 300 cases in NI's care homes

There are almost 300 confirmed cases of coronavirus in nursing and residential care homes across Northern Ireland, the latest official figures show.

Provisional data from the Public Health Agency (PHA) puts the figure at 297, as of 20 April.

Fifty-six care homes in Northern Ireland have now been affected by Covid-19.

That is according to figures released by the Department of Health on Monday.

Pauline Shepherd, chief executive of Independent Health and Care Providers, said the health system now needs to support care homes in relation to staffing.

The Department of Health said that trust-employed or bank staff have been working on the rotas in care homes for the last two to three weeks and the number is expected to grow.

"We knew that it was going to hit the care homes and a high population of most vulnerable people," Ms Shepherd said.

"The issue is that, yes that PHA has been providing advice on how to control, and how to manage the virus, but we now need the health system to come in and support care homes in relation to helping with staffing," she told BBC's The Nolan Show.

She said there were about 16,000 care home beds across Northern Ireland, which are not all occupied.

But she added that not all residents of the homes are elderly.

"Within that number, there are learning disability homes, people that are younger with dementia. So we're not all talking here about frail elderly," she added.

"Whenever we talk about deaths in care homes, we need to put perspective around this, and context, because we know that we will have proportionately higher number of people in care homes with Covid than would be representative in the community as a whole.

"That to me needs to be put in context. When we talk about these figures each week, of people in care homes either being confirmed positive or unfortunately deaths from Covid."