THE boss of a Newport nursing home where 14 residents have died from suspected coronavirus in the past month says she feels the social care industry has been left "marginalised" during the pandemic.

Tregwilym Lodge in Rogerstone first lost a resident to suspected coronavirus on Monday, March 23 - and since then 14 others have died, of whom just one is not believed to have had Covid-19.

Manager Karen Healey said she had requested residents at the home were tested after staff first noticed their symptoms on Friday, March 20. Three days later, the nursing home had its first suspected coronavirus-related death.

But no residents were tested until Tuesday, April 7 - two weeks after the first death.

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A Welsh Government spokeswoman said the current policy is "all symptomatic care home residents are tested within the care home setting," while "all symptomatic care home workers (and symptomatic members of their household) should be referred for testing by their employer."

Mrs Healy said: "Towards the end of March, I was asking for testing as we had a lot of residents who were showing symptoms.

"I was told by Public Health Wales that they would test three of our residents but that didn’t happen.

"I spoke on April 6 to Aneurin Bevan University Health Board and they then came in on April 7 and tested three residents.

"We all feel we have been marginalised at the moment. It's felt like we were not a priority.

"Everything that was happening, was happening around the NHS, but actually we have more beds in care homes in Wales than we do in the NHS."

Explaining how quickly the virus affected the nursing home, Mrs Healey said: "Within a couple of weeks, we had 30 residents who were showing symptoms.

"We’ve had 15 residents die, 14 we believe were Covid-related, but only two had it as a cause of death on their death certificate."

Mrs Healey said of the 15 staff who had been tested, five had come back positive.

"The staff have been absolutely amazing," she said. "They’ve worked over and above their hours and have worked extra shifts.

"When you work in a nursing home, you have that professional relationship, but you also build up a personal relationship with the residents and their families.

"That’s what has made this particularly tough.

"It's only now we are getting through adequate PPE. When you have a major outbreak, you can’t just be given a pack of gloves.

"We’ve been lucky one of the local schools made visors, and we have had some donations come in from the community.

"I’d like to see far more emphasis placed on the care home sector.

"Here we have lost 15 residents within a month and we know we are not alone in that.

"I think we could’ve had more help."

A Welsh Government spokeswoman said: “We are providing an initial £40 million to help local authorities meet the additional costs adult social care providers are incurring as a result of Covid-19.

“We have provided 11.8 million items of PPE for social care settings in Wales. Arrangements are in place for care homes to access PPE via their local authority.”