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UK Covid-19 Inquiry Chair Baroness Heather Hallett Says Government Failures Let Covid Spread In Care Homes
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Government failures left care homes underprotected, allowing rapid Covid spread. Discharging hospital patients to care homes without adequate isolation or testing contributed.
8 outlets told this the same way.
Inquiry faults care home response
The UK Covid-19 Inquiry chair Baroness Heather Hallett said government failures in care settings created an environment that allowed Covid to spread like wildfire, and she said there was no protective ring put around homes as claimed by ministers at the time. The inquiry reported that there were more than 43,000 recorded deaths involving Covid in care homes between March 2020 and July 2022, and it highlighted shortages of PPE for carers while criticising the way hospital patients were discharged into care homes.
Baroness Hallett said a lack of testing, PPE and pre-pandemic planning combined with policy decisions early on "created an environment in which the virus could spread like wildfire". The inquiry also said limits on visits caused enormous harm to residents and their loved ones, while it blamed this on care homes themselves, and it said action to protect them came too late, causing devastating consequences.
Hancock’s protective ring rejected
The inquiry rejected then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s claim that the government had placed a protective ring around care homes, and it said that claim was unfounded. Baroness Hallett told the Commons that the overriding focus of the UK government and devolved administrations was on protecting hospitals, and she said "At the critical early stages of the pandemic, not enough was done to protect those living and working in care homes".
Jean Adamson, of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, said the report was "a devastating account of one of the darkest episodes in our country's history" and she said it showed the government knew the care sector was extremely vulnerable and did nothing. Caroline Abrahams, the charity director at Age UK, said the report was "devastating" and she said when Covid took off, people using social care and the staff and unpaid carers providing it were left totally exposed.
What changes are demanded
Health Secretary Yvette Cooper said the government would provide a "full response" to the report's recommendations in due course, and she agreed that social care had been "undervalued and under-recognised" for too long. The inquiry said the decision to discharge hospitals patients into care homes at the start of the pandemic was understandable, but it said guidance should have made clear they needed to be isolated, and it said this did not happen in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The inquiry also said care workers faced shortages of PPE and had to resort to make-shift workarounds, including bins bags, festival waterproof ponchos and painters' overalls. Nadra Ahmed, co-chair of the National Care Association, said the findings were "really upsetting" and she said the social care workforce has "never fully recovered" from the pandemic, adding that the mantra that "we all had to protect the NHS" appears to have come at the cost of some care home residents' lives.