The National Care Forum has written to the Government to ask that it reverses its decision to not monitor CQC inspectors regularly prior to attending physical inspections within care settings.
In the letter the soundness of the decision taken by the Government not to make the testing for Covid-19 of CQC inspectors mandatory is questioned. The importance of regular testing for CQC inspectors is underlined given the historic decisions taken to send patients back to care homes in the absence a negative test result.
Some of the sector has felt overlooked by the decisions that were taken during the pandemic that could have been interpreted as sacrificing care homes in favour of the NHS at large.
The Government takes the position that weekly asymptomatic testing is not required as inspectors are not required to undertake close personal contact with people.
