WTAF... Did I just hear that??!!!

[Whattodowhattodooo]

Did George Eustice and Prof Dame Angela McLean admit to murder???

They just said that elderly WERE discharged to care homes whilst being asymptomatic in the "early days" Whilst we knew it was happening this is the first I've actually heard them admit to it.... They were in fucking hospital. Fucking test them you stupid fucking bastards 🤬🤬🤬🤬

I'm so very sorry for your loss OP.

This unfortunately, isn't a new thing. I have been out of care a few years now, but even then we'd get discharged residents with MRSA, or noro, or c diff.
Sometimes we were told, sometimes we weren't until we called the GP because they were unwell and they told us why they were unwell. I've been in places where we've had people we could not cope with discharged back to us, despite us being clear about what care needs we can meet and the ones we can't. I didn't blame the hospital itself, they needed the beds, but no one was willing to take the responsibility of that person going somewhere that was suitable. Sometimes it was as simple as they couldn't tell us as we weren't nok. And NOK didn't tell us, or the resident didn't.
But as with every care scandal, it will be forgotten by all those who it hasn't affected personally, like when things are uncovered on panorama type programs. There's a big outcry and everyone is aghast, and then care providers and the cqc say lessons have been learned and staff fired etc etc and it all goes away, while precisely fuck all changes. That'll happen with this, but at least the care staff on the floor aren't getting the blame for a change.
The care providers should have stepped up, reduced their bloody profit margins and got what was needed, and if they couldn't then asked the government for help. And the government should have been monitoring this to make sure it was happening.
It's not a new failing, it's a failing that happens every day, it's just become so more apparent because of this virus, so it's more apparent right now.

And I agree with pp that said smaller and independent homes deal with this sort of thing much better. They absolutely do in my experience, mainly because the people making the decisions are personally involved in the care of the residents, they are doing the job, they see and experience the issues themselves. Large companies have people in offices who've never cared for anyone making the decisions, and it shows.

@Hearhoovesthinkzebras, beds we planned on using for Covid patients. We didn’t discharge unwell elderly patients. These were patients who were stuck in hospital because social care had let them down. Some of them stuck there for months. Patients in no need of a medical bed in a hospital, the care homes were forced to take them. Some of them had unknown covid.

Care homes were still allowing visitors
Care homes wouldn’t buy their staff PPE
Care homes refused patients who weren’t “profitable”
Care home staff work between sites and aren’t barrier trained

This is not the NHS fault and hindsight is a wonderful thing

@stillfeelingmad

I am not in anyway criticising the care home staff. I am criticising the decision, that the government owned up to tonight, that they sent patients home after being in hospital, to a residential care home where they KNEW by the demographic that there would be issues. If that makes me hysterical then so be it. My nan died when she didn't have too.

Firstly, I’m sorry for your loss.

If they’d kept asymptomatic elderly people in hospital for an extra week whilst trying to find enough tests then people would call them murderers for not moving them out quick enough.

No one is a murderer here. Just humans trying to make the right decisions without crystal balls.

@KoppaCamelian

How did all these spaces in care homes become some readily available considering they had been in hospital for months due to social care failings?

It's not a bitchy nasty question, just a question.

KoppaCamelian

Provision should have been made - either within isolation wards in hospitals, within external provision or within individual care homes when patients were discharged to them.

This is the fault of the NHS,care providers and the government. Let's hope an enquiry decides where and how to apportion blame but in some way they are all responsible. There was time to plan for this and anyone with a modicum of understanding about how infection is spread and the principles of infection control should have understood what needed to be done. There has been a failure to protect care home residents and that is a scandal.

A symptomatic people being discharged were not tested full stop.

It was as far as I can see because not because they didn't want to but because at the time it wasn't known how much of a population were asymtomatic and how much it had spread through hospitals.

This would have been the case with routine ops, emergency op with people (even simple broken bones) and also nhs staff. It ravaged our community very quickly.

Yes, there were mistakes in the past and with discharges to "protect the nhs" which became their propaganda.
Yes, testing then became only severely ill in hospital due to the capacity they had for testing.

But "murder" is a deliberate act of harm. Negligence is possible if they had the data that they may have been doing this. Mismanagement is most likely.

Our government didn't handle this well. I think it stems though from that misplaced focus on avoiding overwhelming the nhs.

What I did nite today was that the scientists seem to have become quite defensive and no longer seem to be completely covering backing up the government. Maybe they are fed up of always being the go to "we are following the science" blame for poor decision making. The scientist today was extremely clear that she wouldn't have and hasn't had any input into policy.

Am so sorry for your loss.

I think they acted in the only way they could based on the information and resources they had. UK lab capacity for testing was tiny and took ages. Around 5 days for a test result. That's a long time to potentially catch Covid.

In Feb or March, if my Mum had been in hospital and had no symptoms, I would have moved heaven and earth to get her out as quickly as possible.

I do think care homes need to care. These patients should have been isolated and tested. But people didn't realise how long you were infectious before symptoms appear.

It's tragic. Am sure the thing will be subject to inquiry when it's all over.

And I agree with pp that said smaller and independent homes deal with this sort of thing much better. They absolutely do in my experience, mainly because the people making the decisions are personally involved in the care of the residents, they are doing the job, they see and experience the issues themselves. Large companies have people in offices who've never cared for anyone making the decisions, and it shows

I agree with this and equally the same could be said of the NHS (but that's a whole other thread).

Some of the responses to the OP here are so ignorant and make me so bloody angry, but ultimately make it clear how and why governments get away with so much.

A few things.

They didn't have the capacity to test. They did, if they had done the reasonable thing and accepted help offered by outside labs who were lining up to help knowing how serious the situation was. They didn't and behaved from the beginning as if it was something that would just sort itself out. Fair enough you might say, how could they have known that it would get as bad as it did? Ignoring Italy and Spain, the next thing.

Back in 2016 there was a pandemic drill, codename Excercise Cygnus. From what we know of it, and we don't know all the details because the government has refused to make the findings public, it was scary shit and showed that if we didn't do anything to create more intensive care beds, have more mortuaries in place, more staff, etc, then we would be blindsided by a pandemic and in huge trouble. We know these things from documents that refer to it and from some people who were involved in it. The government have said that they have learned lessons from it but will not say what those lessons are or publish the report.

But, ah, you might say, surely other things were more important and a pandemic was not seen as a huge thread? On to the next thing.

The highest civil emergency risk that the government itself (well governments, this isn't all just Johnson although god knows he doesn't help)? Not terrorism but a global pandemic. That is everyone has known that one would come and it has always been not if but when.

So, our last pandemic drill showed that we were pretty fucked if it happened and we did nothing to improve our chances of dealing with it and we did precisely nothing.

More recent things.

We know that Johnson didn't got to five cobra meetings earlier this year which were to discuss what we needed to do about the novel coronavirus as it was then. This is utterly fucking outrageous. There was nothing done about incoming flights to the UK. Well it was only in China? Yeah, right because we don't live in a global economy where someone from China can go to somewhere else and then someone from there can go somewhere else, and so on. It was stupidity.

Contact tracing was pretty much non-existent. Testing was minuscule. If you had the symptoms, by and large, you weren't tested, you were asked to isolate. This meant no contract tracing of people you'd been in contact with and ... you see the whole thing falling apart.

Johnson talked about herd immunity as did his attack dog Cummings. That literally meant that at least tens of thousands would die, but the expectation was that would be mostly those who were of less use to society, so ... That utter amorality meant that we started too late and we were already fucked and many people who didn't need to die, died and many are still dying.

And then we have all the front line workers who've died because there was no PPE. Nurses, doctors, auxiliary staff, bus drivers, train staff and so on. Mostly low-skilled workers so who cares. And of course the elderly in care homes and care home staff.The staff in care homes are still not getting all the PPE that they need and what in the name of holy fuck is going on when we are still not testing all health workers (including care workers) and testing all homes on a weekly basis because we know they are a test tube for the disease!

Sorry, this is a long rant, but when people say it's not worth getting angry because we can't go back in time and make it all right, that is bullshit. If we don't get angry then we're just making it easier to happen the next time and the next time and the next time. The OP has lost her grandmother and has every bloody right to be angry. Maybe it's not murder but it's certainly manslaughter via the medium of not actually giving a fuck if people died or didn't. And we all should be angry because it did not have to be like this. It absolutely and utterly did not need to be like this. And if you're not at least a little angry then frankly you're not paying attention or you're just part of the problem.

They knew people were asymptomatic and infectious for up to two weeks. They didn't run out of tests - they made a policy decision not to test. They weren't even testing symptomatic people at that time. They were only testing people admitted to ICU with covid. But they did have enough tests.

Sending frail people to residential settings was a policy decision. Not testing was a policy decision (it was part of the second phase of their plan). Not admitting patients with symptoms in the community to hospital until they needed ventilation was a policy decision - and one which incidentally went against guidance from both China and Italy that had been extant for weeks by that point. Not testing oxygen levels was a policy decision. Not admitting for oxygen was a policy decision (although Johnson made sure he fucking got it). Closing down the rest of our healthcare service even when there were empty beds and indeed empty Nightingales was a policy decision.

All of these decisions add up to 55000 excess deaths.

And you can smiley face at "overreactions" to that all you like and clap for heroes all you like and tell yourselves that we have a great healthcare system all you like but this is a scandal. It's a disgrace. There is no excuse whatsoever for this appalling catalogue of errors.

thanks for those sharing their knowledge,
dont forget we dont all have that knowledge

and equally the same could be said of the NHS (but that's a whole other thread)

Yes indeed. My mother died several years ago in hospital having been admitted for a UTI which made her confused. She was starved and dehydrated to death because we couldn’t get in to care for her as the ward was closed to visitors due to a norovirus outbreak. I couldn’t manage to speak to a single member of staff who spoke English well enough or could be bothered to understand that this was not an old woman who had completely lost her marbles and had no quality of life, but a woman who prior to going into hospital was doing the times crossword daily and solving the countdown maths questions more quickly than the expert. Not that being away with the fairies was a reason to treat someone like that anyway, it was despicable.

Thank you @SantanaOhNaNa

PHE lab capacity is highly limited, they made the political decision not to use private sector, university or industrial facilities which were offered on multiple occasions ... over centralised, monolithic, bureaucratic, inflexible, wasteful, inefficient, full of vested interests ... with predictably shit outcomes.

OP:

My sympathy for your loss 💐
Such carnage in the care homes

Maybe the offence of "Misconduct in Public Office" could apply ?

anyway it looks like Bozza is lining up PHE as the scapegoats so I wouldn't be surprised if the entire agency got the chop (otherwise known as lessons learned re-branding & a new name).

@SantanaOhNaNa

Only slightly more eloquent than me! Thankyou for this 😊

Well, I believe quite a number of us in our village had it from late December onwards. Obviously had no definite proof until we have an antibody test.
Until today.

Out for a walk with DH and bumped into a guy we know from the village. He's 70.
Over Christmas, hadn't seen him and then someone in the pub found out he was really very ill in hospital. So ill and unexplained that he ended up in ITU in St Thomas's.
He recovered and when well enough came for a drink and to say thanks for the well wishes at the pub. He said he thought he was done for he was so unwell. But again, hospital said they were unsure what it was, putting it down to a seasonal respiratory illness made worse by his age.
He was offered a antibody test a fortnight ago. He did indeed have covid.
But he said he had felt a bit unwell way before being hospitalised but thought it was just the season and a bit of a cold. Nothing to worry about. So he was around us all, shaking hands, hugging me (who was very unwell at the end of December to the point DH wanted to call an ambulance one evening) with no idea, as no knew of it then.
I'm almost certain we had it now more than before.
And I do believe the scientific lot knew earlier than they let on, and people in care homes and other at risk people have died. Why was it not flagged when the numbers of people dying of what was put down as seasonal flu, pneumonia and bronchitis was far higher than usual?
It's complacency really.

Gosh can't believe people are telling OP to calm down, please show some empathy. Everyone should be angry and disgusted about this happening to our most vulnerable.

I'm starting to really be disappointed at those who are saying things like no ones to blame, it couldn't have been predicted. The government had prior warning! But were complacent and arrogant. To me it looks like they'll just get away with it because for some reason British people take any crap the government gives them these day! Boris must have brainwashed half of the public!

They were able to unblock beds by removing the need for local authorities to fund care packages or prolong negotiations with carehomes. It’s all about money. As most of the homes are privately run they were probably all too ready to fill empty beds at senior management level.
All homes are CQC monitored and one of the policies they have to have is a Business continuity - arrangements for emergencies and major incidents plan which includes protocols for pandemics.
Most of this is covered in the following document. Since care homes have to deal with flu and norovirus outbreaks annually they should have been up to speed.assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/449049/Code_of_practice_280715_acc.pdf

They were told to just fund it and central government would cover the costs. In the same way they have wiped clean all trust deficits. This info is available on gov.uk site but you will have to read through the whole document . In usual managerial language I think it was called a statement of readiness.

Reading this and listening to some of the facts that have emerged in the past few days - the mismanagement of this 'crisis' is appalling.

But Mr Eustace (Useless?) today failed to recognize that the Government of which he is a part made any real mistakes as far as I could tell?

The Government policy from Day One to surround itself with 'academics' and 'scientists' and say that basically all decisions were guided by them ('based on the science') represents the greatest abdication of responsibility by a UK Government - ever.

And next month when there are 3 million unemployed we will be told that it is an unfortunate consequence of necessary actions to protect the NHS and save lives - blah blah.

Bollocks. It is a predictable consequence of being totally unprepared and making bad decision after bad decision.

The decisions in relation to care homes have resulted in thousands of individual tragedies as above. Thousands and thousands more care home residents are effectively living out miserable existences isolated from their friends and families! What a complete shambles!!

Nationally the pandemic readiness was laughable, that's true.

It took time to get the testing running smoothly. A new lab running new to them kits needed two to three weeks of testing before you could be assured of the results and even then it's only a 75% accurate test. Countless runs of tests have had to be redone because it hasn't been done correctly. It's not an easy thing to implement.

There is no way to know whether a patient who wasn't tested took Covid out with them or caught it from staff in the home. We don't know how many of us are asymptomatic carriers.

There is a place for anger but we don't know enough about this yet and yes hindsight is always 20:20.

If you've worked clinically or operationally through this you know how murky it was and how complex the decision making has been.

Why the fuck not?

We didn’t even have tests for symptomatic patients at that stage. We were going on temperatures and Xray changes alone. We had debates about doing screening CTs for asymptomatic patients, because we couldn’t swab them. Don’t you remember people being at home with symptoms and being told there were no tests?

40% of our department were off at one stage, because they or somebody in their family had had a cough or temperature in the preceding 14 days, and we couldn’t swab them to find out if it was covid, or a toddler cold.

I’m very sorry about what happened to your relative. But at that point, it was genuinely felt that it was unsafe to keep asymptomatic (and presumably covid-negative) frail patients in hospital when they were fit for discharge, because of the risks to them of catching it in hospital if we kept them in.

Obviously there should have been some form of quarantining on discharge. Maybe that would have been a good use of the Nightingales. Certainly in London, it spread far faster than expected (literally in the space of one week in my ward - I went on holiday and we had no positive patients, and I came back a week later and 50% of the ward had it). Patients who I discharged prior to going on leave had not been exposed as far as I knew at the time, because we didn’t think it had arrived in the hospital yet (this was early March, there had been about 40 cases in the whole of the UK at that stage). But in retrospect, there’s every chance they had been exposed.

The principle of getting covid negative patients out of hospital asap was not a bad one. We just weren't fast enough.

@ChristmasCarcass I do find your attitude astonishing. If I worked for an organisation that was in any way implicated in 55000 people dying I wouldn't be making excuses for it. I would be horrified and wanting to do everything in my power to hold decision makers accountable, to have a proper investigation and to actively demand systemic and structural policy changes.