The highly respected Frome care home, Gracewell has returned the home back into total lockdown due to one staff member testing positive for coronavirus.

The home also revealed that it has today (May 28) been waiting sixteen days for tests for staff and residents.

The manager of the home wrote to residents' families today with the news, saying that in addition to the one positive tests, two further staff members have been showing symptoms.

Someone who has a friend in the highly regarded home, passed the news onto Nub News - along with praise for the staff and management at Gracewell for being so open with communications and working hard to keep coronavirus out of the home.

"They have been doing a brilliant job," the person told Nub News. " But how can they work without tests. But they have done so well."

Nub News understands that residents have been confined to their rooms at least one occasion over the past few weeks, but only with suspected coronavirus cases - this is the first confirmed case.

A person living in the home said they were frustrated and angry that they were once again confined to their room while the home has been 'begging for testing kits'.

The full message from the home today (May 28) is:

We have today been informed that one of our team members has tested positive for COVID-19 and two others are showing symptoms, our thoughts are with them at this difficult time.

As such we have had to make the difficult decision to place the whole home back into isolation for the safety of our residents. This does mean that all residents are being asked to remain within their rooms and whilst this has not been an easy decision we do hope you understand our reasons for needing to take this course of action.

As you are aware we ordered testing kits for all of our residents and team members on the 12th May. We have received communication advising us due to processing high volumes of requests from care homes there is a delay. We have been chasing these daily and have escalated this through Public Health England, CQC and our MP. At this time we are unable to obtain these any quicker.'

Frome Nub News has approached the Gracewell team for a comment .