UK rejects calls to publish data of care-home deaths from virus

Johnson says 275 health and social care workers have died from COVID-19; UK’s toll tops 40,000, worst in Europe; 110,000 applied for self-employed income scheme after launch: Minister.

Campaigners for the welfare of elderly people and their relatives are calling on the UK government to be more transparent after authorities declined to disclose the number of COVID-19 deaths in individual care homes.

Citing the need to protect privacy and to avoid “creating confusion,” among other reasons, the agencies that separately regulate care homes in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland each rejected requests by Reuters that they disclose the death tolls at specific facilities.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday that the deaths of 144 health care workers and 131 social care workers had been reported as involving COVID-19.

The United Kingdom’s total COVID-19 death toll now exceeds 40,000, by far the worst yet reported in Europe.

Across the United Kingdom, thousands of people have died in care homes after becoming infected with the coronavirus, according to the government’s own statistics. Advocacy groups that run helplines for families of care home residents say callers are desperate for more information about where outbreaks have occurred. But they say they aren’t getting it.