The care sector was “an afterthought” during the Covid-19 pandemic with failings allowing the virus to “spread like wildfire” and resulting in thousands of deaths despite the claim there was a protective ring around care homes, the inquiry has found.
Then-health secretary Matt Hancock’s claim – made in May 2020 about protections at the start of the pandemic – was “unfounded”, UK Covid-19 Inquiry chairwoman Baroness Heather Hallett said, adding: “Quite the opposite was true.”
The inquiry has found that vulnerable care home residents were left with “insufficient protection” as patients were discharged from hospitals without knowing if they had the virus.
There were more than 43,000 recorded care home deaths involving Covid-19 between March 2020 and July 2022, the report said, and inquiry hearings last year heard a civil servant describe the toll as a “generational slaughter within care homes”.
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