Matt Hancock Accused of Rejecting Care Home Covid Testing Advice

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According to claims in The Daily Telegraph chief medical officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty had told Mr Hancock in April 2020 that there should be testing for all going into care homes and segregation whilst awaiting a result however the message exchange in WhatsApp suggest Mr Hancock decided against the initial guidance, telling an aide the move just muddies the waters before introducing mandatory testing for only those coming from hospitals

Mr Hancock initially welcomed the advice and saying it represented a good positive step and that we must put into the doc to which an aide replied that he had sent the request "to action"

However later the same day Mr Hancock messaged again saying he would rather leave out a commitment to test everyone entering care homes from the community and "just commit to test & isolate ALL going into care from hospital

I do not think the community commitment adds anything and it muddies the waters " he said

“DISTORTED

ACCOUNT”

Mr Hancock fervently denies the distorted account with a spokesman alleging the messages have been ‘spun to fit an anti-lockdown agenda

A spokesman for Mr Hancock said that he (as health secretary) "enthusiastically accepted" advice from the chief medical officer on 14 April that testing was needed for people going into care homes

Later that day he convened an operational meeting on delivering testing for care homes where he was advised it was not currently possible to test everyone entering care homes which he also accepted he said

"Matt concluded that the testing of people leaving hospital for care homes should be prioritised because of the higher risks of transmission as it wasn't possible to mandate everyone going into care homes got tested

The spokesman accused the Telegraph of doctoring the messages by excluding a line from a text from one of his aides which "demonstrates there was a meeting at which advice on deliverability was given"

The statement added: "By omitting this the messages imply Matt simply overruled clinical advice That is categorically untrue He went as far as was possible as fast as possible to expand testing and save lives,” also adding that the right place to examine what happened during the pandemic was the public inquiry which is now under way and is due to begin hearing evidence in June

BETRAYAL

The Independent Care Group (ICG) today (March 1) said that decision may have contributed to devastation in care homes during the pandemic

ICG Chair Mike Padgham said: “At face value, these messages seem to expose a tragic betrayal of those most vulnerable to the Covid-19 pandemic

We can only guess how many lives were lost because the spread of the virus in care and nursing homes was not prevented sooner

The cavalier attitude being taken towards care settings makes a nonsense of the claims that the Government was throwing “a protective ring around care homes It was doing anything but

The ICG believes the Government was slow to see the risk to care home residents in the first place

“At the outset we were told we didn’t need to do anything differently Mr Padgham added Then we had the panic of people being discharged from over-run hospitals into care homes without testing and here we have the evidence that the health secretary ignored advice that would have helped

As ever social care was badly let down and the care of the most vulnerable seriously betrayed There are some very serious questions to be answered

RESTORING CONFIDENCE

Mr Padgham said the Government had to restore confidence in its handling of social care by providing the reform the sector urgently needs

Many care providers will be reading today s reports and feeling once again that the Government doesn’t care about care ” Mr Padgham added I think the only way the Government can start to rebuild trust is to get on with the reform of care and help us to end the crisis which was made so much worse by the impact of the pandemic ”

Figures from CSI Market Intelligence last week revealed that 247 homes closed during 2022 whilst just 123 new ones opened That left the sector with a net loss of 124 homes and, according to the report, a loss of 230 care beds

As we lose care providers more and more people will be joining the 2 6m people over 50 who Age UK report are living with unmet care needs,” Mr Padgham added

”The Government surely has a moral responsibility to ensure there is adequate care including enough publicly-funded beds and homecare to look after our oldest and most vulnerable citizens

LIMITED NUMBER OF TESTS

Lord Bethell a health minister during the pandemic said the Government was “desperately” trying to scale up testing at that point of the crisis but at the time it was necessary to prioritise who was swabbed due to the available capacity

The reality was there was a very very limited number of those tests ” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today

People who were coming out of hospitals had the highest rates of transmission therefore “it was sensible and right to prioritise those” first he said

He told BBC Radio 4 s Today: The formal decision-making is done through official paperwork and we don’t have that in front of us

“That’s why this partial glimpse into the decision-making is so unfortunate because it gives a misleading impression

NATIONAL SCANDAL

Rights for Residents campaigner Diane Mayhew who was not allowed due to restrictions to say goodbye to her father as he died of Covid and also lost her mother-in-law in a care home during the pandemic said in a TV interview : “This haunts me, what my dad was thinking god only knows it’s a national scandal that this happened Clearly voices were raised in government and ignored and thousands of families were crying out for help during this period exposing the fact that people were dying from other risks and not just Covid”

“This revelation today is just adding salt to the wound and these wounds are still open We are still campaigning for Gloria s law we have to protect people in the future with new legislation that guarantees the right of every resident and people in hospital to have an essential care support at all times”

“We have to make sure this never happens again” she added