The government says it is on the cusp of issuing new guidance for designated visitors to meet – and touch – their loved ones inside care homes, but ‘normal’ visiting remains some way off.

Speaking at the government’s daily briefing today, Scotland’s National Clinical Director Jason Leitch said the Health Secretary would be issuing new guidance shortly, suggesting that allowing people back into care homes to visit their loved ones was almost as great a priority as getting children back into school.

“It is horrid that family members can’t visit other loved ones inside care homes,” said Professor Leitch.

“We are very keen that designated visitors will be allowed soon. We are also keen as we can be that touch will be allowed, but touch is a risk.

“All of this is risky. So, we need to do that in a balanced way and don’t think [the questioner’s] phrase of normal care home visiting is what we are heading towards yet.

“What we are heading to is designated indoor visiting with named individuals who would have PPE training, who would perhaps be able to touch their relatives etc. But we’re not heading back to normal care home visiting for some time.”

The government says that although it has now managed to arrange for 99.7% of residents of older people’s care homes to be vaccinated, there were also other considerations to ensure people in care homes remain protected while the virus is circulating in the community, such visitor access to PPE and testing.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said, despite the “extraordinary” levels of uptake of vaccination and the need to allow visiting to resume as quickly as possible, the government still needed to be cautious about creating new risks for people in care homes.

“We know that the vaccine takes two to three weeks to give any protection. We also still have questions, the scientific community has unanswered questions, about the impact [the vaccine] has on transmission of the virus.

“There is no doubt that the vaccine will pave the way to greater normality in visiting arrangements but we have got to make sure that we do that carefully and safely, and the Health Secretary is considering these issues right now.”

Dementia expert Professor June Andrews told healthandcare.scot last month that care home visiting should not have been the subject of blanket bans, but instead visits should have been considered on a ‘case-by-case basis’.

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