The UK Covid-19 Inquiry has concluded that the claim made by then-health secretary Matt Hancock about a protective ring around care homes was "unfounded", with failings allowing the virus to "spread like wildfire" and resulting in thousands of deaths.
Inquiry chairwoman Baroness Heather Hallett said the care sector was "an afterthought" during the pandemic, adding: "Quite the opposite was true" to Hancock's May 2020 assertion. The report found that vulnerable care home residents were left with "insufficient protection" as patients were discharged from hospitals without knowing if they had the virus.
Failings and Impact on Care Homes
The mantra of protecting the NHS "sometimes came at the expense of the users and providers of care", the report found, with care homes "becoming prisons" for some amid visiting bans and many residents feeling "abandoned". Lady Hallett said the pandemic had "a devastating impact" on carers and those they cared for, with efforts to protect these groups "came too late" due to "an absence of proper pandemic planning for the adult social care sector".
There were more than 43,000 recorded care home deaths involving Covid-19 between March 2020 and July 2022, the report said. Inquiry hearings last year heard a civil servant describe the toll as a "generational slaughter within care homes".
Hancock's Claim and Inquiry Findings
At a Downing Street press conference on May 15, 2020, Mr Hancock, who resigned from government in 2021 after admitting to breaking social distancing guidance by having an affair with a colleague, said: "Right from the start, we've tried to throw a protective ring around our care homes." Bereaved families have previously called the phrase a "sickening lie" and a "joke".
In a video statement following the publication of her report on Tuesday, Lady Hallett said: "At the critical early stages of the pandemic, not enough was done to protect those living and working in care homes. The claim that a so-called 'protective ring' had been thrown around care homes – 'right from the start' – was unfounded."
Report Details and Recommendations
The 287-page report also found that preventing visits to care homes "caused incalculable harm to residents and their loved ones", and that shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) led to care workers using festival waterproof ponchos, painters' overalls, and homemade PPE from fabric, bin bags, and bed linen. It also noted that do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation (DNACPR) decisions made during the pandemic based on age, disability, or health conditions, or without a personalised assessment, caused considerable distress, which the inquiry branded "unacceptable".
Support for the approximately 5.8 million unpaid carers across the UK "came too late", and many of the at least 1.5 million care workers "put their lives at risk to provide care", but a lack of centrally recorded data on care worker deaths hindered understanding of the virus's impact.
Lady Hallett's recommendations include better pandemic planning by UK governments, tracking bed capacity and staffing levels in care homes and homecare, ensuring "safe and timely isolation of care home residents, including following discharge from hospital", financial support for adult social care staff to self-isolate, and published guidance on visiting restrictions based on the principle that residents have the "right to in-person visitors, except in the most grave or exceptional of circumstances". She also called for mandatory end-of-life care training and a voluntary workforce register for adult social care workers.
Data published in July showed the public inquiry into the Covid pandemic has cost the Government more than £122 million to respond to so far, on top of the estimated £200 million cost of the inquiry itself.
