Coroner to examine seven ‘unnatural’ care home deaths during coronavirus pandemic
A coroner is to examine the circumstances that led to a number of deaths in a care home at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
Some 11 deaths were reported at Vale View Heights, formerly known as Holmesley Care Home, in Sidford, Devon, in early 2021, with all believed to be related to the outbreak.
The coroner Alison Longhorn set out the scope of a future hearing into seven of the deaths at a pre-inquest review held at Exeter Coroner’s Court on Monday.
The seven people the inquest will focus on are Roy Gilliam, Jean Hartley, Doris Lockett, William Wilkinson, Susan Skinner, Ronald Bampfylde and Stanislawa Koch.
Ms Longhorn took the unusual decision to have one inquest covering all the deaths.
While she did not set a date for the hearing, the coroner said she expects it to be held in the autumn and to last two days.
She said: “In all these cases there is the medical cause of death that I have been given, are on the face of it natural causes of death. They are chest infections, Covid.
“But a natural cause of death could be considered unnatural for a number of reasons – for example, if the death has been contributed to by neglect.
“I was made aware there were some queries around how the Covid infection was managed at the care home, I have reason to suspect these on the face of it natural deaths are, in fact, unnatural.”
She added: “We will be looking at the weeks prior up to these deaths, the infection with Covid, how that was managed by the care home and how these people, your loved ones, came to be infected and how the outbreak was managed.”
The hearing will look at what the Government Covid guidance was like at the time and hear from doctors and pathologists, as well as police officers who investigated the deaths.
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