It was well known by mid-March that asymptomatic cases could pass on the infection. I remember that because on Friday 19/03, before lockdown, I complained to my management that although the chap who worked in the next desk to me had reported he was off work and self-isolating because his family had gone down with CV symptoms, they had not thought fit to inform me. I had found out by luck, by overhearing managers talking in the open plan office. I was furious because I was due to visit my elderly parents to support them that weekend. Our management cited “staff health confidentiality” issues even though it was already obvious that the CV pandemic had made that management attitude completely obsolete.
The care homes that have survived without any CV cases are the ones whose managers resolutely refused to accept elderly patients being transferred from hospital. They could do so because they were less dependent on council and NHS funding. The ones who were dependent on the council funds were bullied into accepting the CV+ patients. The hospitals knew the risks but were ordered by the Dept of Health to carry out the evacuation. Care homes are designed to stimulate residents by mixing them closely and many found it difficult to change their regimes to one of isolation.
Other factors such as lack of PPE, agency care workers covering several homes etc were all known, but when these decisions were being made it seems obvious that there was no proper risk assessment, or the risk assessment was skewed by the desired outcome. The Dept of Health staff were focussed on the risk of hospitals being overrun, as they had seen in northern Italy. I am not sure that the full scale of the Italian and Spanish (Madrid) care home CV+ disasters had fully penetrated their thinking.