Covid "spread like wildfire" despite Matt Hancock's claim of protective ring around care homes, inquiry finds
There were more than 43,000 recorded care home deaths involving Covid-19 between March 2020 and July 2022
The care sector was “an afterthought” during the Covid-19 pandemic with failings allowing the virus to “spread like wildfire” and resulting in thousands of deaths despite the claim there was a protective ring around care homes, the inquiry has found.
Then-health secretary Matt Hancock’s claim – made in May 2020 about protections at the start of the pandemic – was “unfounded”, UK Covid-19 Inquiry chairwoman Baroness Heather Hallett said today, adding: “Quite the opposite was true.”
The inquiry has found that vulnerable care home residents were left with “insufficient protection” as patients were discharged from hospitals without knowing if they had the virus.
The mantra of protecting the NHS “sometimes came at the expense of the users and providers of care”, the report found, with care homes “becoming prisons” for some amid visiting bans and many residents feeling “abandoned”.
Lady Hallett said the pandemic had “a devastating impact” on carers and those they cared for, and efforts to protect these groups “came too late”, with failures as a direct consequence of “an absence of proper pandemic planning for the adult social care sector”.
Her report said the “failures” set out in her findings “created environments in care settings in which the virus could spread like wildfire”.
There were more than 43,000 recorded care home deaths involving Covid-19 between March 2020 and July 2022, the report said, and inquiry hearings last year heard a civil servant describe the toll as a “generational slaughter within care homes”.
At a Downing Street press conference on May 15, 2020, Mr Hancock – who resigned from government in 2021 after admitting to breaking social distancing guidance by having an affair with a colleague – said: “Right from the start, we’ve tried to throw a protective ring around our care homes.”
Bereaved families have previously called the phrase a “sickening lie” and a “joke”.
In a video statement following the publication of her report into the adult social care sector on Tuesday, Lady Hallett said: “At the critical early stages of the pandemic, not enough was done to protect those living and working in care homes. The claim that a so-called ‘protective ring’ had been thrown around care homes – ‘right from the start’ – was unfounded.
“Quite the opposite was true. During the crucial weeks of March and early April 2020, the overriding focus of the UK government and devolved administrations was on protecting hospitals.”
Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice (CBFFJ) UK said Mr Hancock’s claim had been a “cruel lie”.
Speaking on behalf of the group, Jean Adamson – the daughter of Windrush pioneer Aldrick Adamson who died having caught Covid in his care home – said the report was “a devastating account of one of the darkest episodes in our country’s history”.
She said: “It shows that the government knew the care sector was extremely vulnerable to a pandemic and yet did nothing. Failing to act until it was too late.
“It shows that Matt Hancock’s claim to have thrown a protective ring around care homes was a cruel lie.
“The most at-risk people in our society, the sick, elderly – many of whom had a full and long life ahead of them – were failed by a government who abandoned them and left them to die.”
A solicitor representing more than 7,000 families from CBFFJ described the report as a “superficial damp squib”.
Data published in July showed the public inquiry into the Covid pandemic has cost the Government more than £122 million to respond to so far, including costs for legal advice and dedicated staff working on preparing evidence.
That amount is on top of the estimated £200 million cost of the inquiry itself.