Care homes in Wales were caught up in a nightmare ‘experiment’ during Covid, a leader social care champion has said.

Mary Wimbury, chief executive of Care Forum Wales, was speaking after the UK Covid-19 Inquiry moved to Cardiff this week.

Admitting untested hospital patients to care homes in Wales contributed to almost 1,500 excess deaths between January 2020 and January 2023, Care Forum Wales said, with a lack of a rigorous testing regime and PPE in the early stages had devastating consequences for residents.

Wimbury said: “During those early weeks, we were talking to our counterparts in care associations across the United Kingdom and I think all of us felt the focus was very much on the NHS and there wasn’t sufficient focus on care homes in particular.

“We felt more planning could have been done in advance in relation to the different types of pandemics and how we would react to them.

“It’s definitely the case we were pressing for testing in particular for people being admitted to care homes from hospitals before that was implemented.”

The care champion said care homes felt as they “were living in an experiment”, which was their “worst possible nightmare” due to the frailty of their elderly residents.

Wimbury added: “We started asking questions in February 2020 about preparations in terms of the care sector and it became clear in the early days of the pandemic in the March that we needed an extension of testing and access to sufficient PPE for staff working in the social care sector, as well as funding to implement the infection control  measures that were necessary.

“There were gradual steps as different measures were introduced. Initially, we go the extension of testing for new admissions to care homes and for symptomatic care home residents.

“At the start there was a rule that you could only test five people in a care home and once you had five tests you couldn’t have any more. Clearly, that didn’t make sense going forward.

“Then we moved on to testing all staff and residents when there was an outbreak and finally to all residents and staff being tested regularly.

“What the inquiry gives us an opportunity to do is to think about what could have been done better in advance so that, heaven forbid, if we were to have another pandemic in future we can be better prepared.”