The Covid questions that won’t go away

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ONE of the heroes of Covid,” these are the words the chair of Care Forum Wales used to describe Mark Drakeford upon celebrating the former First Minister with a Wales Care Award.

Mr Drakeford’s seriousness and determination to explain was valued by many people throughout Wales during the pandemic.

Yet one of the areas in which his decision-making has been most heavily criticised was over the lack of protection for people living in care homes during the first wave of the pandemic.

The award was given to Mr Drakeford just weeks after the Covid Inquiry heard that the Welsh Government, under Mr Drakeford, had a deliberate policy to discharge patients into care homes without Covid tests during the pandemic, despite there being scientific evidence to suggest that people without symptoms of Covid could spread the virus.

The evidence was revealing about the extent to which ministers were aware they were sending the virus into the most vulnerable places in society but did so anyway.

When Mr Drakeford was asked about this at the inquiry, he said it was a classic example of “what you know at the time”, and he said that if ministers had known then what is known now about asymptomatic transmission they would have been testing people.

Yet there are many who feel that the people making the decisions – principally him and then health minister, now First Minister, Vaughan Gething – should have been questioning the advice they were receiving much more carefully than they were.

The inquiry aired several documents that showed there was information at the time that should have raised concerns. And the policy authored by Frank Atherton, Wales’ chief medical officer, shows civil servants believed care homes should be able to manage isolating cases in line with existing infection control.

Thousands of people died in care homes during the pandemic in Wales. The data for how many of those deaths involved Covid early in the pandemic is limited because of the lack of testing. One care home alone saw 15 unexplained deaths early in the pandemic. We may never know how many of those deaths were avoidable.

There may be much that people believe the former first minister did well during the pandemic but the optics of Mr Drakeford being given this award by a group representing care homes has not gone down well. Anna-Louise Marsh-Rees, one of the representatives of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru said that it was “adding insult to injury”.