Legal fight over father’s care home Covid death
ADEVON woman who is challenging the government over its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic says a report from MPs has “skipped over” the initial failure to protect care home residents who were “sitting ducks”.
Dr Cathy Gardner, from Sidmouth, has brought the case following the death of her father Michael Gibson, at the age 88 in a care home in April 2020, early in the first lockdown.
Dr Gardner, who has a Phd in virology, claims that the UK Government, and NHS England, unlawfully failed to do enough to protect the right to life of vulnerable care home residents in the early response to the virus.
A report from MPs on the Science and Technology Committee and the Health and Social Care Committee, published on Tuesday, said the UK’s preparation for a pandemic was far too focused on flu, while ministers waited too long to push through lockdown measures in early 2020.
In the wide-ranging study stretching to 151 pages, MPs criticised the fact community testing was abandoned in March 2020 as a “seminal error”, said NHS test and trace was too slow and failed to have a big impact, and that thousands of people died in care homes partly due to a policy of discharging people from hospital without testing.
The MPs concluded that the “decisions on lockdowns and social distancing during the early weeks of the pandemic – and the advice that led to them – rank as one of the most important public health failures the United Kingdom has ever experienced”.
Dr Gardner, who has a science background and worked in the pharmaceutical industry, said: “For me, the section on social care skipped over the surface. It mentions in the first paragraph that the arrangements to protect the elderly were of vast importance, particularly in the early stages of the pandemic, but it does not go back to mention what were the measures to protect the elderly, what should have been done, and if they were not done, why not.”
She added: “Nothing was done for people in care homes. They were sitting ducks. The government has a legal duty to protect the most vulnerable. We have asked what steps were taken over the infamous protective ring around care homes, which was not there – we know it was not there.”
Dr Gardner, who represents Sidmouth Town on East Devon Council and is a member of the East Devon Alliance, has raised more than £130,000 with a public appeal to fund a legal challenge to the government, but the campaign is still £35,000 short of the total amount needed.
She said she was partly bringing the case in memory of her father, who was an assistant registrar and filled out thousands of death certificates. Dr Gardner said his own certificate is inaccurate as he was not tested for Covid, but it states his death was due to “probable” Covid-19, suspected to have been caught from a patient discharged from hospital to his care home in Oxfordshire.
Dr Gardner is bringing the judicial review alongside Fay Harris, whose father also died with Covid-19 in a care home. They argue certain key government policies and decisions led to a “shocking death toll” of more than 20,000 care home residents from Covid between March and June 2020.