"In the first two years of the pandemic, there were more than 40,000 Covid deaths in care homes across England and Wales — that’s around 30% of all Covid deaths, despite the fact that care home residents account for only around 5% of the total population aged 65 or more. It’s a colossal tragedy, which many families believe could have been avoided if ministers had made the right decisions at the start of the crisis.
Much of the blame has been attributed to guidance issued in spring 2020 which ordered NHS hospitals to “urgently discharge” all patients “who are medically fit to leave” in order to free up beds. Against the Chief Medical Officer’s advice, the Government also told care homes that “negative tests are not required before transfers”, and that patients without Covid symptoms or a positive test could be safely cared for “as normal”. Testing of all care home staff was ruled out as well. Testing was subsequently made mandatory for those entering care homes from hospital, but not for those coming from the community. Regular testing wasn’t introduced until July, by which time four in every 10 care homes had experienced an outbreak.
It’s now clear that this led to tens of thousands of care home residents getting infected and dying — as Hancock himself would later tell the Health and Social Care Committee. The reason he gave for refusing to approve the blanket testing for care home admissions, as revealed by the WhatsApp conversations, is astonishing: he was afraid it could “get in the way” of his self-imposed and widely publicised target of 100,000 Covid tests per day. In other words, the targeted testing of people coming into contact with the most vulnerable, high-risk group of all — care home residents — was sacrificed in favour of what was largely a propaganda sting: the mass testing of the general population, most of whom were never at risk from Covid in the first place."
https://unherd.com/thepost/the-grim-lesson-of-the-lockdown-files/
Much of the blame has been attributed to guidance issued in spring 2020 which ordered NHS hospitals to “urgently discharge” all patients “who are medically fit to leave” in order to free up beds. Against the Chief Medical Officer’s advice, the Government also told care homes that “negative tests are not required before transfers”, and that patients without Covid symptoms or a positive test could be safely cared for “as normal”. Testing of all care home staff was ruled out as well. Testing was subsequently made mandatory for those entering care homes from hospital, but not for those coming from the community. Regular testing wasn’t introduced until July, by which time four in every 10 care homes had experienced an outbreak.
It’s now clear that this led to tens of thousands of care home residents getting infected and dying — as Hancock himself would later tell the Health and Social Care Committee. The reason he gave for refusing to approve the blanket testing for care home admissions, as revealed by the WhatsApp conversations, is astonishing: he was afraid it could “get in the way” of his self-imposed and widely publicised target of 100,000 Covid tests per day. In other words, the targeted testing of people coming into contact with the most vulnerable, high-risk group of all — care home residents — was sacrificed in favour of what was largely a propaganda sting: the mass testing of the general population, most of whom were never at risk from Covid in the first place."
https://unherd.com/thepost/the-grim-lesson-of-the-lockdown-files/