There were new calls today for an inquiry into the pandemic crisis in care homes amid new allegations about how they were treated.

Homes were forced to take untested patients from hospitals and placed under pressure to put Do Not Resuscitate orders on all patients, according to a report by the Queens Nursing Institute. Staff reported struggling to get access to local health services through GPs, district nurses or hospitals.

The institute surveyed nurses and managers in 163 homes in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. 43% said they had received discharged patients who had not been test while 20% said they had received patients who were COVID-19 positive. One in ten complained about the imposition of DNR orders on residents without consent or discussion with families or staff.

One nurse said: “The acute sector pushed us to take untested admissions. The two weeks of daily deaths during an outbreak were possibly the two worst weeks of my 35-year nursing career.”

Professor Alison Leary, from South Bank University, London, who wrote the report, called for an inquiry into the treatment of care homes. “Ten per cent of the respondents raised an issue, because they were either blanket decisions for whole populations, or they were imposed without discussion with the care home or the family or the residents, and that is really worrying.”