Covid inquiry finds care homes lacked early protection

The UK Covid-19 Inquiry found that governments failed to protect adult social care adequately during the early stages of the pandemic, as attention focused on the National Health Service. Its sixth report, published October 20, says care residents and workers were especially vulnerable and that protective action came too late. The report said the claim that a protective ring had been placed around care homes from the start was unfounded. Former health secretary Matt Hancock used that phrase at a Downing Street press conference on May 15, 2020. He told the inquiry it was rhetoric, while the report said the wording did not reflect what was happening in care homes in the first weeks and months of the pandemic. The inquiry heard that more than 43,000 deaths involving Covid-19 occurred in UK care homes between March 2020 and July 2022. Its report said governments knew before the pandemic that care home residents were highly vulnerable to respiratory viruses, but the sector received insufficient protection when it was most needed. It attributed the failures to an absence of proper pandemic planning for adult social care. The report described key protections as arriving after the...