Many English care home residents feel as if they are in prison amid seemingly endless coronavirus restrictions on their activities and visitors, with a number “losing the will to live”, a committee of MPs has been told by charities. One charity told the MPs that its helpline had been told that someone in a care home felt they would “rather die than carry on living like this”. Groups working with care residents said there needed to be a better balance between protecting vulnerable people from Covid-19, and the mental and physical toll of strictly limited visits and lack of interaction, the all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus heard. The hearing on the wider impact of coronavirus on older people found that as well as serious difficulties amid the peak of the lockdown, such as access to food and cash, many were facing long-term problems including grief from the death of a partner, often exacerbated if they could not be with them at the time. The evidence session, part of a wider inquiry by the all-party group into the way coronavirus has been handled by the government, heard particularly harrowing details about the continued effect of people inside care homes. Judy Downey, who chairs the Relatives and Residents Association, a charity that speaks up for people in care, said some care homes had tried very hard to maintain contact between residents and relatives, for example through newsletters and regular calls. But the “confusing” guidance affected them all, even though 60% of homes had experienced no coronavirus cases, she explained: “I think for a lot of people, they’re thinking they must preserve life at all costs, without actually valuing what makes like worth living. “What makes life worth living for most people? It’s interaction with the people they love, and doing things they like, and all of that has gone. And it’s not necessarily because there’s Covid present. “Sometimes there was, and sometimes there might be, but it’s people living in a kind of hideous limbo. Some people are saying to us that their relative would rather die than carry on living like this.” Helen Wildbore, the director of the charity, said care home residents had suffered the “double isolation” of having restricted visits from relatives, and less interaction within the home. “People go into care not just to have their physical needs met, but also their social needs,” she said. “And if you take away that social support network, homes become very different places. “Sadly, many of the callers to our helpline have been telling us that the current situation in care homes is now very much like a prison, with such restricted visiting, residents unable to leave the grounds of the home, and limited interactions with other residents and staff.” This was having a “really devastating impact” on the mental and physical health of residents, as well as on staff, she said, and those outside who were “seeing their relative slowly deteriorate” over video calls, Wildbore said. “As one relative put to us, they’re losing the will to live,” she said. “We really need to find a safe way to manage the virus going forwards in care settings, to achieve a better balance between protecting life and protecting wellbeing.” Under rules for English care homes, visits from relatives should be time-limited, and only from a “single constant visitor”, to limit the possible spread of Covid. But Wildbore noted that other areas of life for older people, such as the NHS, had very different regulations: “We heard from somebody today whose father has broken their hip and gone into hospital, and they’ve been able to go in daily to visit him. Once he goes back into care those restricted visits will come back into play.” Morgan Vine, the head of policy at Independent Age, said the charity had calculated that since the start of the pandemic, 98,000 people had lost a partner, one-and-a-half times as many people as normal over such a period. “There are going to be many people in later life who are experiencing complex grief,” she said, explaining that this could happen, for example, when a death was unexpected, or a bereaved person could not be with a loved one when they died. “All of that can combine to create a situation where people experience PTSD symptoms and would really need some professional support,” Vine said.