Lockdown might soon begin to ease while the protection of the elderly and vulnerable is tightened

The dreaded spread of Covid-19 through care homes, where residents are so vulnerable to it, is now under way across the United Kingdom.

Keeping it out of such institutions was always going to be difficult, with heroic care workers and other suppliers necessarily coming and going.

Yet at the same time, many European countries are now moving towards easing lockdown.

This is not as contradictory as it might sound.

Many countries, soon probably to include the UK, are moving beyond the complete lockdowns that cause economic disaster, and toward the targeted protection of the vulnerable. One of the most vulnerable groups of all is the older people.

Personal protection equipment to care home staff has been belated and a lower priority, with the focus on frontline NHS personnel.

But as much of the health system is still not being hit as hard as had first been feared, the urgent focus now needs to shift to care homes.

Tragically, for many residents it is already too late.

Meanwhile, there is understandable concern at the death tolls and the accuracy of them in the absence of care home deaths. But collating fatalities at this time is onerous.

Until accurate data is available, it is better to multiply the overall death tolls by perhaps as high a factor as two, and assume that is the real position.

We report today on how restaurants are being destroyed by this clampdown. Sadly, they will be one of the later types of business to reopen, as France’s announcement shows.

That country is reopening its schools on May 11, but other businesses at a later date.

If things go well in containing Covid-19 locally, let us hope that schools in Northern Ireland get back before the summer, and so heralding the first signs of a return to normality.