A care home manager has described how she burst into tears when her “worst fears were realised” and Covid struck down 11 staff and residents.

Sam Leuty runs Kinmel Lodge Residential Home for people with memory loss and dementia on Betws Avenue in Kinmel Bay.

She told the moving story of how, after living with fears that coronavirus would strike her vulnerable clients, she woke up with a feeling of dread one Saturday morning in May this year.

It sparked an emergency that led both the Army and Public Health Wales to descend on her place of work and blanket test all staff and 21 residents.

After three weeks away from the clients she so obviously cares about, Miss Leuty returned to work having lost nobody to the disease and her fears for the future subsiding.

Yet it was the moment she learned that she was Covid positive, in a text from Public Health Wales (PHW), that the enormity of what was happening hit her.

She told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “You see it all on the news and you have that fear that it will kill our clients if it comes into the home.

“It’s extra stressful for the clients and families but the staff were fearful too.

“I received a text saying I was Covid positive on Tuesday, May 12. When I saw it, I started crying.

“It wasn’t for myself. It was pure fear that everyone was going to die and the staff were going to walk out.

“It scares the living daylights out of you. It’s just devastating.

“You think you are going to live that nightmare that you have seen on the TV.”

Both Miss Leuty and her deputy Sharon Jones, plus two residents who had fluctuating temperatures, tested positive and the next day the Army turned up to test all the staff.

On the Thursday, Public Health Wales went into the home and tested every resident.

Five clients and six staff tested positive – so the remaining carers segregated those who were infected from the rest.

“We had to keep it all hush-hush,” said Miss Leuty. “But they caught it early.

“The Army, Public Health Wales and Conwy county council all reacted straight away – they were brilliant.

“It was so stressful, wondering whether we would lose anyone, but the staff have been absolutely amazing.”

Miss Leuty said the home locked down two weeks before official guidance advised they should.

They maintained social distancing where possible and adhered to strict infection controls, with staff changing at work and clothes being laundered on site.

All who tested positive were asymptomatic and it wasn’t until a month later that the Welsh Government started blanket testing care home residents and staff whether they had symptoms or not.

Despite suffering headaches, cramps, diarrhoea and nausea, Miss Leuty worked from home to support staff member Kerrie Whiteley to get the day to day work and handovers completed, despite her having no previous managerial experience.

It wasn’t the only help she received, as Conwy county council funded a nurse seven days a week and agency staff to help while the six colleagues were at home recovering and self-isolating.

The authority also paid for extra PPE.

One of the the residents was “quite poorly” with the virus for three weeks, said Miss Leuty, but thankfully all have now recovered.

She was full of praise for the council. She said: “I can’t stress enough how fantastic Conwy council has been with its support for us.”

She said Public Health Wales also gave advice about how to help disoriented residents cope with the lockdown procedures after the infections were discovered.

However, the fears Miss Leuty had about the virus have now been dispelled to a large extent.

She said: “It’s been the fear of actually contracting the virus in the home that has been the worst.

“We have come through it and that fear has gone – I hope we don’t get a second wave, but the fear has gone.

“But it’s been so hard.”