The Government has ordered all care home staff to receive their first dose of a Covid vaccine by Sep 16 so they are fully vaccinated by the time the regulations come into force on Nov 11. It has previously estimated that the policy will result in around 40,000 care home staff – seven per cent – either quitting or being sacked, costing the embattled sector £100 million to replace.

James Bullion, a former director of Association of Directors of Adult Social Services and current executive director of adult social services at Norfolk County Council, said the care sector is competing for jobs with other sectors that are also recovering from the pandemic.

Mr Bullion added that the final line of response, after redeploying care staff from within the sector and brokering mutual aid agreements between companies, would be “the statutory responsibility of the local authority to step in and to give continuity of care”.

He said: “That does mean the council thinking about what staff does it have that it could temporarily deploy to a care home.

“I wouldn’t rule out anybody… as long as long as the person has the right values. But of course, you’ve got people-facing roles like librarians, social workers, occupational therapists, housing officers and so on, you know, those are the kinds of roles that might lend themselves towards working with and dealing with people.

“But of course, there won’t be enough of those. So we are going to have to think, with the Government, about how we can incentivise people to come to social care to work. So many employers are competing for jobs that it is not a natural assumption that people will go and work in the care sector and that will cause a meltdown in some places.”