A PURBECK care home has appealed for help after a number of residents and staff members tested positive for Covid-19.

Wordsworth House Care Home, Belle Vue Road, Swanage, is working with Dorset Council and Public Health Dorset, after a routine swab test of residents returned positive results.

According to local reports, 34 out of 40 residents, and 30 staff members, have tested positive for the virus at the privately-run home.

Dorset Council’s Swanage ward member, Cllr Gary Suttle, said: “They have had Covid-19 at the home and have called on Dorset Council to assist to keep staffing numbers up.

“The home is coping and it is working with all the local agencies.”

A Poole resident who is part of the Poole Covid-19 Community Support Group is the granddaughter of one of the residents who has tested positive for Covid at Wordsworth House.

She told the Daily Echo: “We found out last week my nan was Covid positive.

“Luckily she has been relatively OK, so we hope she won’t have any complications.

“But Covid is so unpredictable, you just don’t know.

“We cannot breathe a sigh of relief until the whole thing is over.”

Her grandmother, aged in her 80s, only moved into the home in December.

And, according to the concernded relative, her grandmother had been scheduled to get her first Covid-19 jab just a week after the positive test came back.

“It was really tough to hear she was so close,” she said. “We had been doing Skype calls with her - I managed to Skype her last week, two days after her positive Covid test.

“But because of the staff shortage, I doubt I’ll be able to do it at the moment.”

“When people realise it could happen to them, that their loved one is in a situation like this in a care home, it may get more people to help - make them volunteer to help.”

Wordsworth House Care Home operations manager Kellie Cooke has appealed for any care home professional to contact her if they can help with staffing.

Outbreaks of the coronavirus within care homes saw the rate of infection within over-60s in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole continue to rise last week. Speaking last Monday, Dorset director of public health Sam Crowe said the figures were “extremely concerning” with as much as two-thirds of these infections coming in care homes.