Who is to blame for Covid care deaths?
THE report on the transfer of elderly patients from hospitals to care homes (Mail) makes grim reading. With 3,600 transferred without virus testing, this was tantamount to playing Russian roulette with the lives of the elderly in care homes. I would like to know who authorised the transfer of the patients and the identity of who signed the orders for this to happen so that some accountability can be established for the benefit of the next of kin who lost their loved ones.
DENNIS FORBES GRATTAN,
Bucksburn, Aberdeen.
IT is clear now that people with the virus were knowingly transferred to care homes in the spring, and it doesn’t take a genius to know that this would spread the disease. Yet an official report states that ‘the policy had no significant statistical impact on care home outbreaks’. Was statistical evidence looked for, and who drew up this report? The whole episode has the smell of whitewash about it.
WILLIAM BALLANTINE,
Bo’ness, West lothian.
IN her daily briefing, Nicola Sturgeon referred to the Public Health Scotland report into admissions to care homes from hospitals during the pandemic. She stated that ‘hospital discharges were not found to have a significantly higher risk of an outbreak’. According to the report this includes hospital discharges of any kind, i.e. patients who have tested Covid-positive.
If Nicola Sturgeon seems to be satisfied with the conclusion that the return of coronavirus-positive care home residents into their communities doesn’t pose a significant infection risk, it needs to be asked why she otherwise bans us from normal human contact such as seeing friends and family at home?
REGINA ERICH, stonehaven, Kincardineshire.
REGARDING the Public Health Scotland report on Covid in care homes, on the point of ‘statistical evidence’ what was the percentage call that they’d come to the conclusion they came to? Can Public Health Scotland really be the independent organisation that it is claimed to be by Miss Sturgeon? Family members of loved ones no longer here must be listened to and not lost in the lines of this report. The First Minister trumpets she is in charge of policy, so that must mean she is in charge of policy failure too. At the time of the care home crisis, Professor Devi Sridhar said you must ‘test, test, test’ and the same again when students returned to university, and not after the event. The First Minister’s constant claims of accountability may come back to haunt her.
ARCHIE MAcKINNON, Glasgow.