During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the disease swept through nursing homes in Britain as many elderly people moved out of hospitals into residential care without being tested for the virus.

According to the Office for National Statistics, since March 2020, there have been 45,632 registered deaths of nursing home residents involving COVID-19 in England and Wales.

In England alone, the first wave of the pandemic - from March 14 to Sept 11, 2020 - brought 19,783 deaths involving COVID. During the second wave - Sept 12, 2020, to June 11, 2021 - the number rose to 20,766.

The figure then dropped to 2,707 in the third wave - June 12, 2021 to January this year.

The UK government has been criticized by some international human rights organizations for failing to take appropriate action to protect nursing home residents from COVID despite knowing the illness put older people at increased risk.

Research by the Alzheimer's Society, a UK care and research charity for people with dementia and their caregivers, found that 58 percent of 105 nursing homes did "not feel able to effectively isolate suspected COVID-19 residents "who were discharged from hospitals.

A separate study this year by University College London found that more than one third of nursing home residents and a quarter of their staff members in England showed signs of infection with COVID during the first two waves of the pandemic.

The study, published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity, looked at blood samples from nearly 5,000 nursing home residents and staff members across England between June 2020 and May 2021.

Researchers found that 34.6 percent of residents and 26.1 percent of staff members tested positive for the nucleocapsid antibody, which indicates prior SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Lead author Maria Krutikov at the UCL Institute of Health Informatics said, "Our study shows the prevalence of COVID-19 in care (nursing) homes was much higher than in the general population in England up until May this year."