Shield around care homes was nonsense, says advisor
A “SHIELD” which was supposed to protect Derbyshire OAPS from Covid was “nonsense”, ex-no10 advisor Dominic Cummings has claimed.
His testimony casts a spotlight on why 470 Derbyshire and Burton patients were discharged from hospitals to care homes without being Covid tested.
The claim by Mr Cummings, the Prime Minister’s former chief advisor, came alongside an allegation that Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, lied about wholesale testing of hospital patients being discharged to care homes.
This had led to unchecked patients being moved from hospitals to care homes, bringing the virus into what was supposed to be a highly-protected environment. Such was the extent that these settings were supposed to be protected some care staff slept at their workplaces and relatives were barred from visits.
Freedom of Information requests filed by the Local Democracy Reporting Service last year showed that at least 472 Derbyshire and Burton hospital patients were discharged to care homes without being tested for Covid-19.
This was out of 725 patients discharged from Derbyshire’s hospital trusts during that time, in line with national guidance. Government guidance between March 1 and April 15 said that only patients with Covid-19 symptoms needed to be tested. But it became apparent that one in every three people with Covid do not display any symptoms.
On April 16, Government policy changed to test all hospital patients being discharged to care homes. By April 17 there had been 34 Covid-19 deaths in Derby and Derbyshire care homes.
By May 15 this had reached 211. Last week, Mr Cummings said: “We were told categorically in March that people would be tested before they went back to care homes. We only subsequently found out that hadn’t happened.
“The Government rhetoric was we put a shield around care homes – it was complete nonsense. Quite the opposite of putting a shield around them - we sent people with Covid back to the care homes. Hancock told us that people were going to be tested before they went back to care homes, what the hell happened?
Mr Cummings alleged Mr Hancock had lied to the Prime Minister and other colleagues over the pledge to test all patients being discharged to care homes.
In Parliament, Mr Hancock, when questioned over the alleged lie, said: “I think that of course what happened in care homes was tragic, but we did everything we could to protect the NHS, to minimise transmission, with the knowledge that we had.”
He said “so many” of the allegations (from Mr Cummings) were “unsubstantiated”. Mr Hancock said: “We’ve published the full details of the approach we took (to testing hospital patients being discharged to care homes).
“We worked with the care home sector, as much as possible, to keep people safe and we followed clinical advice.”
At a later press conference, Mr Hancock said: “When it comes to the testing of people as they left hospital and went into care homes, we committed to building the testing capacity to allow that to happen. Of course, it then takes time to build testing capacity.
“One of the critical things we did was set the 100,000 (tests per day) target back then to make sure we built that testing capacity and it was very effective. Then we were able to introduce the policy of testing everybody before going into care homes.”
Here are the number of patients who were discharged from our hospital trusts to care homes during March 1 to April 15, when wholesale Covid tests for all those with or without symptoms was not in place:
Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust - 505 patients discharged to care homes, 377 not tested; Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust - 13 patients discharged, none tested; Derbyshire Community Health Services NHS Trust - 64 discharged, “unable to determine” how many had been tested.