WATCH: Liverpool mayor warns hospital patients could be moved to care homes

Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson has warned that the city is considering releasing hospital patients into care homes as local hospitals are “running out of space for people” due to the spike in coronavirus cases in the area.

Speaking to Sky News this afternoon, Anderson described how officials were being forced to consider the move despite the disastrous effect it had on the rise of Covid cases in care homes during the first wave.

Anderson told the programme: “Our conversations are around how we can move people from the hospitals into, for instance, care homes – and you know what that caused last time.

“But we have got real serious concerns about the availability of beds in those wards. And it means that for the other critical care patients, we’re running out of space for people.

“The message from me is that this isn’t some fantasy it’s not being made up. This is the reality, this is the life of dealing with Covid. I called for a ‘circuit breaker’ three weeks ago because I was concerned about the infection rates going out of control.”

During the early weeks of the pandemic, many hospitals discharged elderly patients into the community without Covid tests in an effort to free up hospital beds to cope with a massive influx of coronavirus patients.

It was later found that many of those patients “seeded” the virus in the UK’s care homes. It’s been estimated by the ONS that as many as 30,000 elderly care home residents in England and Wales have died from coronavirus.

Anderson’s call for a national ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown comes the day after Labour leader Keir Starmer called for the same measure to help stop the growing second spike of the pandemic.