Nicola Sturgeon’s care homes catastrophe

Nicola Sturgeon is fond of telling Scots that the prevalence of Covid-19 is ‘five times lower’ in Scotland than in England. Or at least she was, until the Office for Statistics Regulation released a statement calling her data source ‘unclear’ and adding that ‘we do not yet have evidence to support the validity of these comparisons’. The SNP has been retailing the notion that Sturgeon’s response to the pandemic far outstrips that of Boris Johnson. The public may be on her side, but the facts are not.

One of the starkest — and deadliest — failures in handling coronavirus has been the Scottish Government’s care homes strategy. Initially at least, St Andrew’s House acted more or less in lockstep with Whitehall and on either side of the border elderly patients were transferred from hospitals to care homes to sandbag the NHS. Both governments were caught decanting patients before mandatory testing processes had been put in place.