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Matt Hancock has been accused of refusing expert advice to covid-test community residents entering care homes in the early stages of the pandemic after a series of Whatsapp messages leaked to newspapers.
according to a survey of Daily Telegraph, Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty told the former Health Secretary in April 2020 that “everyone entering a care home” should be tested.
A message published by the newspaper appeared to suggest that Hancock backed the advice, but later changed his mind and instead introduced compulsory testing for people coming from the hospital.
The Whatsapp exchange was sent a day before the release of “Covid-19: Action Plan for Adult Social Care” on April 15th. This is a government document that sets out plans for the care system during the pandemic.
The Care Plan said the government would “enact a policy to screen all residents before entering care homes” but would “start with all residents being discharged.” It said it would “shift” to a policy of testing everyone entering care homes from the community.
A Hancock spokesperson said: This is important because Matt insisted that he backed Chris Whitty’s advice, held a meeting about deliverability, told them it wasn’t deliverable, and tested everyone who came from the hospital. “
according to daily telegraph, on the advice of the Chief Medical Officer, Mr. Hancock texted his advisers: This is clearly a positive step and should be documented. “
However, later that day, he appeared to have changed his mind, telling his adviser: I don’t think community commitment adds anything and it makes the water muddy. “
Journalist Isabel Oakshott leaked a pile of more than 100,000 WhatsApp messages after working on Hancock’s memoir, The Pandemic Diaries.
It included a series of correspondence between Mr Hancock and Prime Minister George Osborne, then editor of the Evening Standard, in relation to the government’s mass testing programme, saying that “testing is going well”. In another exchange, Hancock wrote him: while promoting favorable press coverage.
Oakshott, who has described the lockdown as an “unmitigated catastrophe”, said he was making the message public because the official Covid investigation would take “years” to finish, adding that the “massive He argued that it could be a “whitewash”.
“That’s why I decided to publish this sensational cache of private correspondence, because I absolutely cannot wait any longer for an answer,” she said.
A Hancock spokesperson said Wednesday night: “It is outrageous that this distorted account of the pandemic, driven by partial leaks, is being spun into an anti-lockdown agenda. Hundreds of thousands of lives will be lost, and the message shows many working hard to save lives.
“The full documentation is already available for investigation. This is a good place for objective assessment, so real lessons can be learned.
“Those who say the lockdown should not have been ignored ignore the fact that half a million people would have died without the lockdown.
“The story being told in nursing homes is completely false.
Hancock was also said to be “considering all options” in response to the leak. A source close to him said Oakshott had breached a legal NDA, adding, “Her actions are outrageous.”
It has been widely reported in the past that the Boris Johnson administration has failed to heed multiple warnings about the vulnerability of the care sector. Last April, Public Health UK advised the government in March 2020 not to allow hospitalized patients with potentially asymptomatic Covid-19 to be transferred from hospitals to nursing homes. was revealed, which was overruled by the minister or official.
Watered-down advice has moved hundreds of patients to care homes, with bereaved family attorneys alleging that 20,000 care home residents died as a result in the early weeks of the pandemic. increase.