A Government diktat that NHS hospitals should move hundreds of elderly patients to care homes has been branded “reckless” and blamed for the homes’ soaring coronavirus death rates.

In two damning policy documents published on 19 March and 2 April, officials told NHS hospitals to transfer any patients who no longer required hospital level treatment, and set out a blueprint for care homes to accept patients with Covid-19 or who had not even been tested.

Analysis by the Telegraph suggests that the rate of coronavirus deaths accelerated more than twice as fast in care homes than in hospitals in the week beginning 7 April - two and a half weeks after the first policy document was published.

The number of Covid-19 deaths in care homes was estimated by Care England to have reached 7,500 a week ago, the Government is under pressure to start publishing a daily tally of coronavirus-related deaths in care homes.

Under the government guidance, patients who tested positive for coronavirus were allowed to be sent from hospitals to care homes. The second document states that “Negative tests are not required prior to transfers / admissions into the care home.”