UK govt sacrificed elderly to free up hospital beds during Covid-19 – inquiry

The virus spread ‘like wildfire’ among the elderly because of government failures, a public investigation has found

The UK government’s negligent approach towards care homes at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic has led to high disease and death rates among the elderly, a public inquiry into the nation’s response to the disease outbreak has concluded.

More than 43,000 people died from Covid-19 in care homes throughout the UK between March 2020 and July 2022, with most of them registered during the first year of the pandemic, according to the data presented in the inquiry report published on Tuesday. That amounts to just under 10% of the total care homes population between 2022 and 2023.

An earlier report published by the British parliament put the death toll between March 2020 and April 2021 at over 41,000, adding that it amounted to nearly a quarter of deaths from all causes among care home residents as well as more than a quarter of all Covid-19 deaths in England over that period. The report named the rate one of “the worst in Europe,” adding that the loss of life could have been mitigated.

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The care homes were “an afterthought” for the government focused on preserving the National Health Service (NHS) during the pandemic, said former judge Baroness Heather Hallett, who is leading the inquiry. She blamed the development on the government’s initial failure to advise testing Covid-19 patients discharged from hospitals before their return to care homes and isolating them once they were back.

“The mantra of ‘protecting the NHS’ sometimes came at the expense of the users and providers of care,” she stated. “These failures created environments in care settings in which the virus could spread like wildfire.”

In March and April 2020, some 25,000 hospital patients were discharged into care comes in England alone to free up beds before mandatory testing was introduced in mid-April 2020. The practice was later recognized as unlawful by the British high court. The investigation head defended the practice by calling it the “least worst decision to a terrible problem” but still maintained that a lack of isolation advice was a “significant omission” on the government’s part.

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Hallett also disputed a claim by then Health Secretary Matt Hancock that he had thrown a “protective ring” around care homes from the start of the pandemic by calling it “unfounded.” She also criticized the lack of personal protective equipment for the care home staff she branded “wholly unacceptable.”

The report is the sixth out of ten to be published by the inquiry costing more than £200 million ($267.77 million). In July, another report by Hallett and her team concluded that the UK had wasted billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money during the pandemic. The country entered the pandemic with its PPE stockpile “in a perilous state,” including large quantities of expired equipment, while emergency procurement and distribution plans had never been properly tested, it said at the time.

Earlier reports by the inquiry found that authorities across the UK did “too little, too late” during the pandemic and that delays in introducing restrictions contributed to thousands of additional deaths.