Professor Paddy Mallon:

There are probably a number of factors that contributed to what happened in the nursing homes. I had the experience of going out to visit nursing homes during the pandemic. There was huge variation in what was happening in nursing homes. There could be a nursing home being decimated in one district, with all staff and patients infected with Covid-19 and a number of people dying, yet one could travel 200 m to 300 m down the road and see a nursing home that was completely unaffected. We can talk about hospital discharge and nursing homes, but it is not the only story. There is certainly something at a managerial level within nursing homes that some nursing homes were able to do excellently to maintain the safety of their residents and staff throughout the whole pandemic, but other nursing homes were unable to do. That is the key. What were the nursing homes that avoided this doing right? We need to learn from what they did right-----