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Dedicated staff at a care home are living in tents to help protect the residents from Covid-19.

The move has been taken by nine members of staff at the Victoria House Care Home in Ryde, Isle of Wight, as part of its "no one in and no one out" policy to provide maximum protection for their 20 residents aged between 82 and 103.

Manager Claire Leggett said: "It was the staff that came up with the idea of the tents, I was initially thinking of arranging for them to staying in the home but we don't have facilities.

"This is an old Victorian house with 20 residents in 20 rooms, there is no extra space so it was a case that we will put the staff where we need to put them.

"I'm not sure how it will work long term but they are coping really well, I have such a good team around me."

(Image: Claire Leggett / SWNS.COM) (Image: Claire Leggett / SWNS.COM)

She added: "We have been locked down to the public now for about three weeks, and the staff have been living in for about eight days.

"We have some really old residents, our eldest is 103 and they are just like family, I would be mortified if anything were to happen.

"The virus is going through care homes like wildfire, and I didn't want it to come in and then to lock it down inside, I felt I had to take action, I had no choice."

Almost half of people who have died with coronavirus in Europe were residents in long-term care facilities, the World Health Organisation says.

(Image: Claire Leggett / SWNS.COM)

Dr Hans Kluge, WHO's regional director for Europe, said it was a "deeply concerning picture" regarding those in care.

He told reporters on Thursday: "According to estimates from countries in the European region, up to half of those who have died from Covid-19 were resident in long-term care facilities.

"This is an unimaginable human tragedy."

In the UK, there are fears that many thousands of care home residents had died so far after contracting Covid-19.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said on Tuesday that the number of deaths in care homes had quadrupled in a week to 1,043.

Another 1,000 could have died in the five days after that, the Care Quality Commission said.