Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Government ‘absolutely’ protected care homes

Nadhim Zahawi – Government ‘absolutely’ threw protective ring around care homes

Dominic Cummings’ much anticipated testimony before the lessons learnt joint inquiry on Wednesday has proved as volcanic. Earning his particular ire was the health secretary Matt Hancock. Cummings claimed that Hancock should have been fired for ’15 to 20’ different reasons, and alleged that Hancock had lied about supplying tests for Covid patients before they were discharged to care homes during a cabinet meeting in March 2020. Matt Hancock stated two months later that the government had thrown a ‘protective ring’ around the care home sector. Andrew Marr challenged the Vaccines Deployment minister Nadhim Zahawi to provide evidence for this claim, given that care homes are thought to have seen as many as 42,000 deaths due to Covid since the pandemic began:


AM: Do you think, now, that the government threw a ‘protective ring’ around the care homes?

NZ: I think absolutely … It’s easy with the benefit of hindsight to learn the lessons… [Our] capacity at the time [was] constrained by [our] diagnostics industry… We placed the residents of care homes at the top of the list of Phase 1 of the vaccination programme.


Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in