Indemnity insurance

One significant way to alleviate the pressure on intensive care beds is to ensure that more care homes accept Covid-19 patients. I am chair of Revitalise, a charity providing one of the meagre 131 ‘hot’ care homes in England providing step down beds for Covid-19 patients. Each home has to pass additional infection control checks and have dedicated and trained staff.

However, Revitalise is now being forced to cease providing this service for new patients as no UK insurance provider is prepared to provide indemnity insurance for the provision of care and support to people with Covid-19. Unlike large providers we are just not able to take the risk to ‘self-insure’, nor should any of us be put in a position to do so.

We have been trying to solve this issue with both insurance companies and government for weeks and have been ignored. The government has the power to fix this and must act swiftly to do so.

George Blunden

London