A ROMSEY care home is aiming to raise £1,000 in a bid buy more personal protective equipment to keep the home coronavirus free.

Edwina Mountbatten House, Broadwater Road, is urging people to donate after staff at the 17 bedroom home discovered the cost of PPE had "gone through the roof" during the pandemic.

Now business administrator for Edwina Mountbatten House, Gill Beckett, has revealed she "would be delighted" if they could reach their target to ensure the 13 carers can continue to keep residents safe from the deadly bug.

The 49-year-old from Romsey said: "The JustGiving page was set up because the cost of face masks gloves, aprons and overshoes has gone through the roof in the last couple of months.

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"Now we have to throw our money into buying plastic for PPE instead of developing the home for residents, but we are fortunate we have kept coronavirus out so far.

"At the outset of the coronavirus our manager Heidi Clarke took the proactive decision to limit the staff coming on site for 14 days.

"This decision potentially kept the virus from our home."

Gill also stressed hand sanitiser supplies were "getting really low" while people were panic buying the products.

She added: "Our supply of PPE has never run out, but one week there may be no gloves we can order and another week there are no aprons.

"As we have not got all of our bedrooms full our running costs are very tight, so we are being as efficient as we can; this money would really make a difference until normal business resumes.

"I would be delighted if we hit our target because it would go such a long way to help us for the future, as we do not know when we will come out of this."

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When asked if families will be able to visit the residents, she said: "There are 13 residents here and we are looking forward to when families can visit again, which we are slowly moving towards next week.

"We are going to have socially distanced visits outside, but everyone will have to wear PPE.

"All of the residents families have been so supportive and our team who work here have been wonderful."

To donate to the care home visit shorturl.at/dyACD.

The JustGiving page was set up on Saturday, May 16.