‘Staff caused care home infections’

Mounting a robust defence of his handling of care homes during the pandemic, Matt Hancock insists the virus was primarily brought into facilities by infected staff members.

the former health secretary has faced fierce criticism over the government’s decision in the early stages of the outbreak to discharge potentially infectious Covid patients from hospitals into care homes without prior testing.

the policy has been blamed by many for the huge numbers of Covid deaths in care facilities during the first wave of the pandemic, when an estimated 20,000 elderly residents died. But in his bombshell pandemic diaries, Mr Hancock insists that only a fraction of the cases in care homes were actually caused by hospital discharges.

He says he was shown evidence suggesting that the virus was ‘primarily’ brought into homes by infected staff.

And he attacks the ‘scandalous’ behaviour of some care home bosses who he accuses of ‘unscrupulously’ using workers infected with the virus. Mr Hancock also claims that it was the then-nHS boss Sir Simon Stevens who pushed to discharge hospital patients into care homes, saying he was ‘determined to make it happen’.

He admits that transferring them without testing first was an ‘utter nightmare’, but says that at the time officials did not have enough testing capacity to do so anyway.

the claims are likely to prove controversial with families who lost loved ones.

Mr Hancock says that during the first wave of the pandemic official data proves that just 1.2 per cent of care home cases were caused by patients leaving hospital. He insists: ‘the vast majority of infections were brought in from the wider community, mainly by staff.’

A crisis in testing and PPE turned care homes into ‘warzones’ in late March 2020, as the nation was plunged into lockdown.

Weeks later Mr Hancock was ridiculed for saying the government had ‘tried to put a protective ring around our care homes’ from the start of the pandemic despite the policy of discharging hospital patients to them.

Deaths peaked in late April, but it was not until July that weekly deaths in care homes dropped below 200.

in his entry of April 2, 2020, Mr Hancock acknowledged that elderly patients leaving hospital would not be tested for Covid, but claims care homes were given clear guidance on isolation measures. He said: ‘the tragic but honest truth is we don’t have enough testing capacity to check anyway. it’s an utter nightmare, but it’s the reality. under the circumstances, we must make sure that anyone going from a hospital into a care home is kept away from other residents.’

in his entry from April 18, four weeks after the national lockdown began, he said care homes ‘haven’t yet grasped the fact that we’re only going to get out of this if we test, test, test’. in his interview with the Mail, Mr Hancock claimed the government was reluctant to blame staff during the pandemic for fear of damaging morale.

Mr Hancock said he had himself been wary of pointing the finger at carers on the front line. He said: ‘i didn’t want to say it, i didn’t want at the time to demoralise staff by talking about it in a way that would have been very difficult to do in a sensitive manner.’