By Charlotte Webster
The head of the UK’s largest charity care home provider said on Friday that the decision to send covid-19 patients back to care homes during the heights of the pandemic was like “putting a live explosive in a box of tinder”.
Sam Monaghan, chief executive of MHA comments come in the wake of the testimony from Dominic Cummings to Mps, in which he accused Matt Hancock of telling multiple lies, and falsely claiming that Covid-19 patients discharged to care homes would be tested.
Mr. Hancock has defended the allegations by stating that he was under the impression the tests would be carried out and that it was not his fault.
Mr. Monaghan, chief executive of MHA, told Times Radio: “Obviously you had the pressure from the NHS, which we quite understood in terms of real concerns about them being overwhelmed.
“But there’s no way that you can take people into care homes who aren’t tested – it is like putting kind of a live explosive into a box of tinder.”
The ‘protective ring’ around care homes didn’t exist. Community transmission was real, testing & PPE were not routinely available. Despite this complete failure, social care continues to not be given the support it desperately needs.
He added: “Care home residents were seen as somehow an inevitable casualty of this.”
However, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng defended Mr. Hancock. He said: the “difficult situation” Mr Hancock was in while tackling the pandemic.
He told Sky News: “I think what Matt stressed very carefully yesterday was that he was absolutely focused, right from the start of the pandemic, on saving people’s lives.
“He was in a difficult situation as the Health Secretary, in a pandemic, the like of which we hadn’t seen for 100 years. He was under huge pressure.
“And as a Cabinet colleague, I know that he worked really hard and very few people – if anyone – worked as hard as he did and he was very committed to saving lives. Now, he said what he said, I fully believe him but we’ll have an inquiry and that will iron out all these facts.”
And asked on Times Radio whether he should stay in his job, Mr Kwarteng said: “Absolutely, as as a colleague, as I’ve said a number of times on this programme, there hasn’t been anyone in Government that’s been more focused on saving lives, protecting the NHS.
“We’ve put in £92 billion into the NHS during the pandemic, and Matt has been very much at the centre of it.”
It comes after Tory MPs took an urgent question on the pandemic in the Commons on Thursday as an opportunity to show their support.
It is one of the most troubling aspects of this pandemic that the elderly have borne the brunt despite being the most vulnerable in society
Dr Dan Poulter, Conservative MP
Conservative chairman of the Health and Social Care Committee Jeremy Hunt said that, until such evidence is provided, Dominic Cummings’ “allegations should be treated as unproven”.
Party colleague Mike Wood (Dudley South) said: “There was no manual to guide governments going into this new global pandemic, but most people feel the Government responded as well as anybody could.”
And fellow Tory Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) said: “Given the gravity of the situation the Government faced at the beginning of the pandemic and considering we now know there was a hugely disruptive force in the form of Dominic Cummings, I’d like to congratulate ministers.”
However Mr Monaghan pointed out that, of the 40,000 people who died in the first wave of coronavirus, half had been care homes residents.
“That just highlights that there was no support, and that we were abandoned as a sector during that first wave,” he said.
Conservative MP Dr Dan Poulter, who is vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus, has been one of the few people in his party to be publicly critical of the decision.
He said: “There is a strong case for conducting an immediate inquiry into Covid-related deaths in care homes. This would help ensure lessons are learnt so that care homes are better protected ahead of any third wave.
“It is one of the most troubling aspects of this pandemic that the elderly have borne the brunt despite being the most vulnerable in society. We must ensure these mistakes are not repeated and that care homes are never again treated as an afterthought in pandemic planning.”
Mr Cummings also claimed the Prime Minister was furious to discover that untested patients had been discharged to care homes, alleging that Mr Hancock had told them both that people being discharged would be tested.
But when asked if he had told the Prime Minister and Mr Cummings that everyone going from hospitals to care homes would be tested, Mr Hancock said: “My recollection of events is that I committed to delivering that testing for people going from hospital into care homes when we could do it.
What I am very proud of is we built that testing capacity, but it took time“I then went away and built the testing capacity for all sorts of reasons and all sorts of uses, including this one, and then delivered on the commitment that I made.”
The Government told care homes to isolate anyone who was known to be Covid-19 positive in their own room, despite some care home leaders having since said that they were not set up for this.
Allowing patients to be discharged to care homes also meant people who were asymptomatic were in a position to spread the virus.
Government documents show there was no requirement to test patients being discharged from hospital into a care home until April 15, 2020.
Guidance dated April 2 said people who were Covid-19 positive could be discharged to care homes and recommended they were isolated.
It added: “Negative tests are not required prior to transfers/admissions into the care home.”
Guidance in place until March 13 further stated that community transmission was so low it was “very unlikely that anyone receiving care in a care home or the community will become infected”.
When asked at the Downing Street briefing on Thursday if sending people back to care homes untested was his “biggest regret”, Mr Hancock said: “I have answered this question many, many times, because we didn’t have the testing capacity at the start of the pandemic, it wasn’t possible.
“What I am very proud of is we built that testing capacity, but it took time.”