Matt Hancock cannot justify his failure to protect care homes, says Labour
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Over the past year Matt Hancock has repeatedly changed his line on
putting a protective ring around care homes. The failure to protect
care home residents has been blamed on: A lack of understanding on
asymptomatic transmission, despite early SAGE evidence from
February finding cases of asymptomatic transmission Care homes
being safer than hospitals despite care homes not having access to
testing until 15th April, and care homes struggling to access PPE A
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Over the past year Matt Hancock has repeatedly changed his line on putting a protective ring around care homes. The failure to protect care home residents has been blamed on:
Liz Kendall MP, Labour’s Shadow Social Care Minister said: “Matt Hancock was at best disingenuous in his evidence to the select committee today. He selectively used briefings, evidence and clinical advice to defend his record instead of admitting his abject failure to protect care homes in the pandemic. “Even Matt Hancock knows he now categorically failed to put a protective ring around care homes. He has now used multiple excuses for failing to test those discharged to care and family members who have lost loved ones will be frustrated and deeply upset that they still do not have the truth from the Secretary of State today. “The Government was much too slow to act to protect residents and staff. As we emerge from this pandemic Ministers must put in place a plan to transform social care and ensure that care homes never again face a crisis of this scale.” Ends Notes to editors Matt Hancock has previously used multiple excuses for failing to test those discharged from hospital to care homes including:
“…on care home policy throughout we followed the clinical advice. And the challenge was not just that we didn’t have the testing capacity, but also that a test on somebody who didn’t have any symptoms could easily return a false negative and give false assurance that the person didn’t have the disease. That was the clinical advice.’ ‘At the same time, the clinicians were worried, because it took four days to turn a test around, that if you leave somebody in hospital in those four days they might catch covid, and therefore go back to a care home with a negative test result, but having caught it.” Matt Hancock, Health and Social Care and Science and Technology joint select committee session, 10 June 2021 “Approximately 1,500 tests are being processed every day at PHE labs with the great majority of tests being turned around within 24 hours. PHE has processed over 25,000 tests as of 10 March and has not exceeded capacity during this time.” NHS England Press release, 11 March 2020 https://www.england.nhs.uk/2020/03/nhs-to-ramp-up-coronavirus-testing-labs/
“Public Health England have made a recent publication of this. And they found that approximately 1.6% of the cases going into care homes came from people leaving hospital. And there’s two reasons why it might be so low. The first is that there were infection prevention controls, essentially isolation rules around how people went from hospital into care homes, because of course they were not tested because the testing capacity wasn’t there and the advice was not to test for the reasons I have set out…. …The second reason is that just in terms of the numbers the proportion of people who go into a care home is much much higher each day from staff that’s inevitable in any care home. The number of people who are resident who move in and out of a care home on a daily basis even in normal times is a fraction of the number of staff and indeed other professionals in care, like GPs and other health professionals. If you think about a care home and who physically goes in the door, the number of times that that person going through the front door is a resident is really quite a small proportion of the total.” Matt Hancock, Health and Social Care and Science and Technology joint select committee session, 10 June 2021 However, the report draws on data from testing in hospitals at a time when testing was noted to be extremely limited; along with testing in care homes which was also noted to be extremely limited.
“they were not tested because the testing capacity wasn’t there..” Matt Hancock, Health and Social Care and Science and Technology joint select committee session, 10 June 2021 However, UK testing capacity between March 20 2020 and April 15 2020, when the testing for care home discharges was introduced was 485,572
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