UK inquiry finds government failures spread Covid 'like wildfire' in care homes

More than 43,000 people died of Covid-19 in British care homes between March 2020 and July 2022, and the UK's public inquiry has concluded that government failures let the virus spread "like wildfire" among them. Lady Heather Hallett's report, published Tuesday, is the sixth of ten from the most expensive public inquiry in the country's history — a bill already past £200 million.

The centrepiece is the discharge policy. In March and April 2020, roughly 25,000 hospital patients were sent into care homes across England to free up NHS beds, before mandatory testing was introduced on 15 April. The High Court later ruled the policy unlawful. Former health secretary Matt Hancock told the inquiry it was the "least worst decision to a terrible problem," and claimed he had thrown a "protective ring" around care homes from the start. Hallett called that claim "unfounded."

Hallett's finding is narrower but sharper: the discharges themselves were necessary, but the government never advised care homes to isolate the incoming patients — a "significant omission" that turned each transfer into a vector. The care sector, she said, was treated as "an afterthought" throughout, and the mantra of "protecting the NHS" sometimes came at the expense of the people the NHS was being protected for.

The report's texture is bleak. Staff resorted to "festival waterproof ponchos, painters' overalls and gloves purchased from DIY shops," and fabricated protective equipment from fabric, bin bags and bed linen — a shortage Hallett calls "wholly unacceptable." Visiting bans inflicted "immense emotional harm," leaving residents in "profound isolation and a sense of abandonment," with relatives barred from dying loved ones and many still, in Hallett's words, "racked by undeserved guilt." Care workers developed post-traumatic stress and suicidal thoughts; a number killed themselves.

The report makes eight recommendations for the next pandemic, bringing the inquiry's running total to 55, and covers better planning, financial support so social care staff can isolate, and inspection during lockdowns.

The country that spent 2020 lecturing Sweden on the recklessness of its lighter-touch approach has now documented, in its own most expensive inquiry, that its deadliest failure was a policy Sweden never adopted: emptying hospitals into eldercare untested.