Sturgeon firm on care home deaths

Nicola Sturgeon has refused to be drawn on when she knew patients with positive Covid-19 tests were discharged into care homes during tense exchanges in yesterday’s daily coronavirus briefing.

Pressed to reveal when she first found out the transfers had happened, the First Minister said she did not have the information and did not say if or when she knew about the transfers.

The questions came after weeks of pressure from opposition parties for the Scottish Government’s promised inquiry into the government’s handling of Covid-19 in care homes and followed newspaper reports that several patients had been transferred with positive Covid-19 tests.

It also came after Ms Sturgeon said there was nothing she could do to stop families seeking legal redress if they felt care homes or the Government had been negligent in their handling of positive Covid-19 cases. She said:

“I don’t have that information and that is why we have asked Public Health Scotland to do the analysis that gives us the information that people are asking for.

“So when, if patients were discharged from hospital into care homes when they had had Covid, if that is the case then whether in those cases they were discharged after they had recovered from Covid or whether they were discharged in care homes while they had Covid.

“If in the latter situations, what were the reasons for that, was there a clinical rationale for that?”

The First Minister said she believed the Scottish Government was the first to commission that type of in-depth analysis and claimed that was the “right thing to do”.

She said: “I am not party to clinical decisions that are taken and that is not about naming people that is not being party to any clinical decisions that are being taken.”