Care home 'begged for Covid testing'

INQUEST HEARS HOW PLEA WAS MADE BEFORE 3 DEATHS

- OLIVIER VERGNAULT

THE former chief executive of a care home in which three men died after contracting Covid-19 told an inquest into their deaths that she had ‘begged’ for help from the local authority in keeping up with testing.

Anne Thomas is the former CEO of Cornwall Care, the charity which operated Cedar Grange care home in Launceston before it was sold by Cornwall Council to Sanctuary Housing at the end of 2022. She was speaking at an inquest into the deaths of three men – Leonard Austin Mitchell, 79, Geoffrey Walsh Turpin, 85, and Graham Binney, 81 – who died within a few days of each other when the virus swept through the care home.

The four-day inquest had also previously heard that safeguarding concerns had been raised about care at the facility in the period surrounding their deaths.

The inquest heard how there were fears that Covid had been brought into Cedar Grange by staff members who fell ill to it, which senior coroner for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly Andrew Cox said was impossible to establish, or even say whether or not these staff members had actually brought the virus with them into the home.