Chris Whitty dismisses Boris Johnson’s claim care homes to blame for coronavirus issues

‘My enthusiasm for blaming people for anything is zero,’ says England’s chief medical officer

Professor Chris Whitty has suggested care homes are not to blame for the severe problems they faced with coronavirus in an apparent swipe at Boris Johnson remarks on the issue.

Appearing at the Health and Social Care Committee, the chief medical officer for England said that major risks in social care settings were not considered early on in the pandemic, including staff working in multiple residences and those not paid sick leave.

In an at times terse exchange with the committee chair and former health secretary Jeremy Hunt, professor Whitty added it was clear the UK and other countries across the world had “not handled this well” in relation to issues in social care settings.

Professor Whitty also defended the government’s programme of Covid-19 testing and tracing telling MPs it was “incorrect” to assume the mechanisms could “suddenly” be switched on.

During the committee session, Professor Whitty was pressed on comments from Boris Johnson, which provoked widespread criticism, when he appeared to blame care homes for failing to follow proper procedures.

Asked whether care home deaths were caused by them not following procedure, he said: “First of all my enthusiasm for blaming people for anything is zero. That is absolutely not the way you deal with any kind of situation in health care or social care – that’s across the board. That would be my starting point.”

He continued: “I think it is clear that every country that has a care sector has not handled this well. The UK is one country that has not handled this well in terms of issues in social care, but the same is true, as previous speakers said, the numbers are very similar, or even higher, in terms of proportions of deaths in almost every country you look at this.”

Professor Whitty added: “This across the board this has been a major problem. Some of this I think comes from the fact we had not recognised what are in retrospect obvious but were not obvious points early on.

“For example, the fact that people working in multiple homes, people who were not paid sick leave – that is a clear risk. These were major risks in social care settings. There are a lot of things we have learnt that we can now do a lot better in social care and I don’t think any of us will look back at what happened in social care and say the ideal advice was given and this was the fault of anyone.”

Earlier in July, Mr Johnson was forced to clarify his remarks after prompting outrage from the care sector. “We discovered too many care homes didn’t follow the procedures in the way that they could have, but we’re learning the lessons the whole time,” he said at the time.

According to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) earlier this month, one in five care home residents became infected with Covid-19 once the disease was present, while separate figures show that between March and June almost 20,000 deaths in social care settings have been linked to coronavirus.

When challenged on his comment during prime minister’s questions by Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, Mr Johnson said: “The last thing I wanted to do was blame care workers for what has happened or for any of them to think I was blaming – when it comes to take blame, I take full responsibility for what has happened.”

But the Labour leader insisted this was “not an apology and it just won’t wash,” adding: “By refusing to apologise the prime minister rubs salt into the wounds of the very people he stood at his front door and clapped”.

During a heated exchange with Mr Hunt, Professor Whitty also said that “many problems” emerged from a lack of Covid-19 testing capacity.

On why a test, trace and isolate system similar to South Korea was not modelled earlier this year, Prof Whitty told MPs: “I’m absolutely confident, chair, and let me be very clear about this, that we had no capacity to do it on the scale that would have been needed, or for the kind of epidemic we had.

“Sage was consistent, and I was consistent, in saying we needed considerably more testing capacity. Many of the problems we had came out of our lack of testing capacity, but testing alone is not sufficient to have a full test and contact, trace and isolate system.

“This requires an infrastructure we did not have, which was built up by places like Korea.”