Virus modeller Professor Neil Ferguson said he is “shocked” at how little care homes have been protected from the coronavirus.
He told peers Britain’s slow start to lockdown was one of the reasons it has the “worst or one of the worst” outbreaks in Europe.
In evidence to the Science Committee in the Lords, the Imperial College London expert added: “The infections in care homes and hospitals spill back into the community, more commonly from the people who work in those institutions.
So if you can drive the infection rates low in those institutional settings, you drive the infection lower in the community as a whole.” New figures show hundreds of patients were being discharged from hospitals in England to care homes daily during the early