Background COVID-19 outbreaks are still occurring in English care homes despite the non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in place. Methods We developed a stochastic compartmental model to simulate the spread of SARS-CoV-2 within an English care home. We quantified the outbreak risk under the NPIs already in place, the role of community prevalence in driving outbreaks, and the relative contribution of all importation routes into the care home. We also considered the potential impact of additional control measures, namely: increasing staff and resident testing frequency, using lateral flow antigen testing (LFD) tests instead of PCR, enhancing infection prevention and control (IPC), increasing the proportion of residents isolated, shortening the delay to isolation, improving the effectiveness of isolation, restricting visitors and limiting staff to working in one care home. Findings The model suggests that importation of SARS-CoV-2 by staff, from the community, is the main driver of outbreaks, that importation by visitors or from hospitals is rare, and that the past testing strategy (monthly testing of residents and daily testing of staff by PCR) likely provides negligible benefit in preventing outbreaks. Daily staff testing by LFD was 39% (95% 18-55%) effective in preventing outbreaks at 30 days compared to no testing. Interpretation Increasing the frequency of testing in staff and enhancing IPC are important to preventing importations to the care home. Further work is needed to understand the impact of vaccination in this population, which is likely to be very effective in preventing outbreaks. Funding The National Institute for Health Research, European Union Horizon 2020, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, French National Research Agency, UK Medical Research Council. The World Health Organisation funded the development of the COS-LTCF Shiny application.

Background: Antibiotic resistance poses a threat to public health and a burden to healthcare systems. Escherichia coli causes more bacteraemia cases in England than any other bacterial species, these infections, in part due to their high incidence, also pose a significant antibiotic resistance burden. The main aim of this study was to estimate the impact of E. coli bacteraemia on patient inhospital mortality and length of stay. Secondarily, this study also aimed to estimate the effect of antibiotic resistance on these outcomes.

Background: The daily management of long-term conditions falls primarily on individuals and their informal carers, but the household context and its impact on health and social care activity among people with multimorbidity is understudied.Methods: Linked data from health providers and local government in Barking and Dagenham provided a retrospective cohort of people aged 50+ in two-person households between April 2016 and March 2018. Two-part regression models were applied to estimate annualised use and cost of hospital, primary, community, mental health and social care by multimorbidity status of individuals and co-residents, adjusted for age, gender and deprivation. Applicability at the national level was tested using the Clinical Practice Research Datalink.Results: Over 45% of multimorbid people in two-person households were co-resident with another multimorbid person. They were 1.14 (95% CI 1.00, 1.30) times as likely to have any community care activity and 1.24 (95% CI 0.99,1.54) times as likely to have any mental health care activity compared to those co-resident with a healthy person. They had more primary care visits (8.5 (95% CI 8.2,8.8) vs 7.9 (95% CI 7.7,8.2)) and higher primary care costs. Outpatient care and elective admissions did not differ between these groups. Findings in the national data were similar.Conclusions: Care utilisation for people with multimorbidity varies by household context. There may be potential for connecting health and other community service input across household members.