The UK Prime Minister s doubts were said to have grown after hospital patients were sent to care homes without first being tested for Covid in the early weeks of the pandemic.
Shamed Tories now claim they protected care homes as far as we could Mirror 3 hrs ago
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A Tory minister has offered a weak defence of the care homes fiasco - claiming residents were protected “as far as we could”.
Matt Hancock last May boasted he had thrown a “protective ring” around care homes from the start to shield residents from Covid. But after Dominic Cummings branded that claim “complete nonsense”, more evidence has dripped out of just how exposed the frail were.
Challenged repeatedly today on the Health Secretary’s boast, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng swerved repeating - and instead said: “They were protected as far as we could.”
Colleagues of Matt Hancock have flocked to his defence as the Health Secretary came under sustained pressure from the social care industry over the decision to discharge people from hospital into care homes at the start of the pandemic without a coronavirus test.
Mr Hancock told a Downing Street briefing on Thursday that it was not possible to test everyone being sent from hospitals into care homes when coronavirus emerged because the capacity was not available.
And his comments came a day after the Prime Minister’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings told MPs that Government claims about putting a shield around care homes were “complete nonsense”.