The sixth report of the Covid inquiry is highly critical of the way the government tried to protect people in care settings in the UK. Around 500,000 people were living in care homes at the start of the pandemic – with another million receiving care in their own homes. The inquiry said action to protect them came too late, causing devastating consequences.
There were more than 43,000 recorded deaths involving Covid in care homes between March 2020 and July 2022. Here are the key findings of the 287-page report. At the start of the pandemic, the then-health secretary in England, Matt Hancock, said the UK government had placed "a protective ring" around care homes.
But the inquiry says this was not the case, listing a catalogue of failings. It says the care sector appeared to be "something of an afterthought". A lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) meant staff had to resort to makeshift workarounds, including bin bags, festival waterproof ponchos and painters' overalls.
The report is also critical of the way hospital patients who may be infected with Covid were moved to care homes to make space for others. The decision was understandable given the need to free up beds for Covid patients. But, without sufficient testing, it was important to keep these people separate and isolate them from others in case they were infected.
Official guidance in March 2020 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland did not request this. That, the report says, was a significant oversight. When the pandemic started, high levels of staff vacancies and turnover in the social care sector meant that the workforce was "fragile and lacking resilience".
This undermined the ability of the sector to respond to the pandemic, the inquiry says. For example, care homes tend to rely heavily on agency staff who work in a variety of different homes. But a desire not to have staff going into multiple homes, to reduce the risk of infection transmission, meant staff shortages got even worse.
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