Project #82:
Spatiotemporal risk of infection of care homes during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK

Care home residents have restricted mixing with the general population but staff provide a route of infection introduction from the surrounding community. The aim of this analysis was to investigate the timing of first evidence of introduction of COVID-19 to care homes across England, to understand care home characteristics associated with earlier introduction and the relationship between risk of introduction and the surrounding local epidemic.

A rolling analysis over time was planned with the primary outcome being occurrence of a covid-related event (test positive, clinical diagnosis, admission or death) among residents of a care home within the next 14 days from the current time step. Explanatory factors for 14-day risk considered were care home size, whether residential/nursing, proportion of residents with dementia, deprivation index and rural/urban classification of the home’s postcode, and daily incidence of probable COVID-19 infections within the local population of the home’s Middle Super Output Area (MSOA).

The analysis was ultimately retired due to complications with identifying individuals residing in the same household and defining whether or not each household was a care home or private home.