Covid inquiry: Hancock’s care home ‘protective ring’ claim ‘unfounded’
The inquiry’s report on the care sector said action to protect care workers and residents came too late, and counted more than 43,000 care home deaths involving Covid-19.
Matt Hancock’s claim that a “protective ring” was thrown around care homes “right from the start” of the pandemic was “unfounded”, the chair of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, Baroness Hallett, said.
In a video statement as the inquiry published its report on the care sector on 20 October, Hallett said: “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.”
Hancock, then health secretary, told a Downing Street press conference on 15 May 2020 that “right from the start, we’ve tried to throw a protective ring around our care homes.”
The report found that much of the action Hancock referred to did not take place from the start. Testing of everyone discharged from hospital into care homes began in mid-April 2020, and the Infection Control Fund came in mid-May.
In evidence to the inquiry, Hancock described the phrase as “clearly a piece of rhetoric” and “a form of words rather than the substance”, but said “we really did do our best to take all of the actions we could to protect those in care homes from the virus in incredibly difficult circumstances”.
Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam, then deputy chief medical officer for England, said a “ring is a circle without a break in it”. At earlier hearings on 30 November 2023, Hancock accepted that the protective measures in England did not form an unbroken circle, saying it was “quite clear from the evidence that Professor Van-Tam is right”.
By the time of the press conference, thousands of people had died in care homes in England, the report said. Across the UK, it recorded more than 43,000 deaths involving Covid-19 in care homes between March 2020 and July 2022.
The report said the sector “appeared to be something of an afterthought”, and that the failures it set out “created environments in care settings in which the virus could spread like wildfire”. The action taken by the UK government and devolved administrations to try to protect care workers and residents, it said, “came too late”.
A severe shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) left care workers working in “unsuitable or poor-quality PPE or with no PPE at all”, the report said.
The inquiry recommended pandemic planning for the sector, preparations for isolating care home residents who may be infected, and financial support for staff who need to self-isolate. It also called for guidance on how visiting limits would be decided in a future pandemic and a voluntary register of care workers in England.
Hallett added that the recommendations “must be acted upon now before the next pandemic strikes”.
