By CHRIS POLLARD, NEWS REPORTER
Published: | Updated:
Distraught families have accused Matt Hancock of telling a 'cruel lie' when he claimed there was a 'protective ring' around care homes during the Covid pandemic.
Relatives told how sick hospital patients were discharged into homes alongside their vulnerable loved ones, while staff had very little personal protective equipment (PPE) to help curb the spread of the virus.
Many were ordered to stay away as their family members succumbed to disease, or had contact only through windows or via FaceTime.
Jean Adamson, of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, told how she was unable to hug her father Aldrick as he died in a nursing home in April 2020.
'Like so many thousands, he died alone, isolated, a victim of Covid, but also a victim of Government negligence,' she said.
Betrayed: Jean Adamson, centre, with other bereaved Covid families in London on Tuesday
She criticised the former health secretary, ex-prime minister Boris Johnson and former NHS chief executive Simon Stevens for discharging hospital patients into care homes without adequate testing.
'Three men with no medical expertise between them made a decision that became a death sentence for our family members, the most at-risk people in our society,' Ms Adamson said. 'Matt Hancock's claim to have thrown a protective ring around care homes was a cruel lie.
'The sick, the elderly, many of whom had a full and long life ahead of them, were failed by a Government who abandoned them and left them to die.'
Deborah Doyle told how a quarter of the residents at a care home in Sunderland, including her mother Sylvia Griffiths, died of Covid during the first three months of the pandemic. Her mother died aged 76.
Ms Doyle said photographs taken at the time showed staff were not wearing any PPE. 'Where was the PPE, where was the testing? This should have been basic stuff,' she said.