ONCE again weekly figures show that the battle against Covid-19 has moved from the hospital wards to care home facilities, some now struggling to contain clusters of the virus.
Coronavirus is at its most deadliest against the frail and elderly.
The failure to initially protect and cocoon residents of care facilities from the virus, and more worryingly stop the spread of Covid, is partly responsible for the R rating in Northern Ireland remaining either higher or equal to that in England where more than 22,000 people have died.
It seems a baffling statistic to many, that a region that has managed to contain the virus, and so far record just over 500 deaths, should still have such a high predicted community transmission rate.
R0, or R nought, tracks how many people, on average, will be infected for every one person who has the disease.
Experts say for a country to start easing lockdown, R must be below one, ideally 0.5 to allow for a slight fluctuation as people start to mix again in greater numbers.
When the Stormont executive stated this week that Northern Ireland's R rate remains at 0.8/0.9 it raised questions as to how one of the least affected areas, should remain as high as those regions with horrendous death rates.
There are another three weeks of lockdown ahead and, in order to drive down the R rate, the predicted rate of transmission must be lowered.
Given that it remains high because of the horrendous rate of infection in care homes - facilities closed to visitors for many weeks - it is the job of Health Minister Robin Swann and his executive colleagues to solve this crisis.
They must stop deflecting this onto the public, many who are struggling badly as a result of the prolonged lockdown, and take responsibility for solving this attack on our must vulnerable.
