Are these the facts about Matt Hancock’s Covid 19 care homes blunder?
Matt Hancock: Blunderman strikes again.
The cache of 100,000 WhatsApp messages by Matt Hancock about Covid-19, from 2020, in which he discussed delaying or failing to test people going into care homes from the community, got a thorough airing on the BBC’s Politics Live and in Parliament during Prime Minister’s Questions.
PMQs focused mostly on the fact that information about the government’s behaviour during the Covid crisis is starting to drip out piecemeal, meaning it is now a matter of urgency that the independent inquiry into the response to the pandemic be concluded and report in good time.
The discussion on the talk show was more about the content of the messages – and did, in fact, touch on the fact that these messages all came long after the big decisions about testing for Covid-19 in care homes had already been made.
Hancock had known since February that year that people from the community, coming into homes, were infecting the people living there, and since March that people there were dying of Covid-19.
He chose to do nothing about it until April – and then, as the messages indicate, he didn’t do enough.
So, is this a storm in a teacup?
Judge for yourself:
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We know government sent NHS, councils and care homes a letter to discharge older people from NHS hospitals to care homes without a negative Covid19 test or insisting care homes take Covid19 positive patients, which care homes could not resist as so many residents are funded by councils.