Continuing the discussion from Covid: Government policy of discharging hospital patients to care homes 'unlawful':
WhatsApp messages leaked to the Daily Telegraph newspaper suggest Mr Hancock was told in April 2020 there should be “testing of all going into care homes”.
Government guidance later mandated tests only for those leaving hospital.
A spokesman for Mr Hancock said the messages had been “doctored”. “These stolen messages have been doctored to create a false story that Matt rejected clinical advice on care home testing. This is flat wrong,” he said in a statement.
The Telegraph has obtained more than 100,000 messages sent between Mr Hancock and other ministers and officials at the height of the pandemic. The texts were passed to the newspaper by journalist Isabel Oakeshott, who has been critical of lockdowns. Ms Oakeshott was given copies of the texts while helping Mr Hancock write his book, Pandemic Diaries.
In one message, dated 14 April, Mr Hancock reportedly told aides that Prof Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medial officer for England, had conducted an “evidence review” and recommended “testing of all going into care homes, and segregation whilst awaiting result”. The message came a day before the publication of Covid-19: Our Action Plan for Adult Social Care, a government document setting out plans to keep the care system functioning during the pandemic.
Mr Hancock said the advice represented a “good positive step” and that “we must put into the doc”, to which an aide responded that he had sent the request “to action”.
But later the same day, Mr Hancock messaged again saying he would rather “leave out” a commitment to test everyone entering care homes from the community and “just commit to test & isolate ALL going into care from hospital”. “I do not think the community commitment adds anything and it muddies the waters,” he said.
A spokesman for Mr Hancock said this followed an operational meeting, where he was advised it was not possible to test everyone entering care homes.
When the care plan was published on 15 April, it said the government would “institute a policy of testing all residents prior to admission to care homes”, but that that would “begin with all those being discharged from hospital”.
It said only that it would “move to” a policy of testing everyone entering care homes from the community.
There’s lot more information in the article.
As a commentator points out, only 20,000 tests a day could be processed in April, so prioritising was an issue. In that case, why were so many patients ejected from hospital, tested or not, into care homes:
Moving patients from hospitals to care homes
On 19 March 2020, NHS guidance said that “unless required to be in hospital, patients must not remain in an NHS bed”. This policy was implemented to free up beds in advance of an expected surge in coronavirus patients.
On 2 April, the rules on discharging patients to care homes were clarified, saying “negative [coronavirus] tests are not required prior to transfers/admissions into the care home”.
Even elderly patients who tested positive could be admitted to care homes, if measures - such as wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) and isolation - were used.
From 15 April, the government said that all patients discharged from hospitals would be tested for coronavirus.
By this time, an estimated 25,000 patients had been discharged to care homes. In July, Panorama gathered data from 39 hospital trusts, which showed three-quarters of people discharged were untested.
Up to this point more than 5,700 care home residents had died in England and Wales (either in homes or in hospital).
The statistics above are far from complete and the numbers of unrecorded infected and dead will always be greater but unknown.
