Care homes: yet another disaster

YOUR main story (“100 infected patients ‘led to care home Covid crisis’”, April 22) reports on yet another disaster from this SNP Government.

This time, it concerns the needless deaths of hundreds of our elderly due to them having been released from hospital to care homes, even though they had tested positive for Covid.

The report, by Public Health Scotland, makes the quite astonishing claim that this movement of infected patients from hospital to care home meant this act of gross stupidity on so many levels could “not rule out” the spreading of death.

Note the phrase “not rule out”, and wonder where we recruit these report writers from, given that it is as clear as the nose on your face (and was so at the time it was being perpetrated) that the spread of infection would be as inevitable as night follows day.

This was, clearly, so obvious. It is not hindsight.

This decision is not just some mere incompetence by the SNP

Government, as was the case of Prestwick airport, or Ferguson Marine, or the Alex Salmond court costs, or policies that have failed our children’s education, reduced the effectiveness of our police and local government services, and much more.

This is in addition to a decision that will diminish our train services to third-world status when the train franchise is taken in-house under Holyrood control

All these failures matter though they did not directly cost lives. But the hospital-to-care home transfer did cost lives, and those ministers responsible must be brought to book.

James Martin, Glasgow.