Nicola Sturgeon: ‘I carry weight of care home decisions every day’

Nicola Sturgeon has said she carries the “weight” of decisions made around patient transfers to care homes at the beginning of the pandemic with her “every single day”.

Speaking at a Covid-19 media briefingyesterday,mssturgeon declined to apologise for the decisions made, but said that a publicinquirywouldtakeplace.

Her comments come after healthsecretaryjeanefreeman admitted last week the Scottish Government had made “mistakes” in its transfer of thousands of elderly patients from hospitals to care homes in the first months of the pandemic.

From March to May last year, 113 patients were discharged from hospitals to care homes after having had a positive Covid-19 test, but no subsequent negative test, while in total duringthattime3,061patientswere moved without being tested.

Ms Sturgeon said: “Back in late February into March last year we were faced with a horrendous situation, with horrendous decisions that flowed from that. We were watching pictures on our televisions of hospitals in Italy being overrun by Covid and we didn’t have the hindsightthatwehavenow.we thought it was wrong to leave older people in hospitals that were about to be overrun with Covid. We thought they would be safer in other settings with the right infection protection procedures and isolation procedures in place and we didn’t know what we know now.”

Ms Sturgeon said it was “inevitable” the government would get things wrong it its handling of the crisis. "We tried to make thebestdecisions,butwewould havegotthingswrong,it’sinevitable given what we were dealing with, but that doesn’t mean that the sense of responsibility we feel for that is any less,” she said.