The First Minister accepted there will have to be an inquiry into care home infections as she admitted “different conclusions” might have been made with hindsight.
Nicola Sturgeon was asked if transferring around 900 untested people from hospital to residential care in March contributed to the deadly spread of covid-19.
The decision was made on the basis of the best guidance at the time, she said, because they were braced for an influx of patients across hospitals.
“If I apply hindsight to that I come to a different conclusion,” she said in a BBC Radio Scotland interview.
“But let me tell you the situation we were faced with at the time. These older people you are talking about - the so-called delayed discharges - had no medical need to be in hospital.
“At that point we were getting ready for what we considered would be a tsunami of coronavirus cases into our hospitals. Our hospitals, as it turned out were under huge pressure. It would have exposed older people to enormous risk to leave them in hospitals at that point.
“People say there should have been more testing, and that again is a legitimate question. What we knew then about the efficacy of testing of asymptomatic people is different to what we know now.”
Asked if the decisions around their transfer will be probed, Sturgeon said: “These are things that will have to be looked at and scrutiny applied to them in the fullness of time, and we will all want to learn from that. “Undoubtedly there will be an inquiry or inquiries into all aspects of this pandemic, and I think that’s right and proper.”
The scandal of delayed discharges means patients were left in hospital too long because care packages were not arranged for them elsewhere.
The Record revealed on Saturday how opposition politicians blame years of cuts and delays for creating the major problem, with clear implications for people’s safety and health now.
Labour MSP Neil Findlay said it should have been fixed a long time ago.
Yesterday, Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard said: “At a time when we should have been protecting the most vulnerable in our society, it appears that in a rush to protect the NHS from being overwhelmed, care homes were badly let down.”
Meanwhile, Sturgeon defended Health Secretary Jeane Freeman for making an error in a parliamentary contribution.
Sturgeon said: “The health secretary has literally for the last three months been working around the clock on this. Sometimes you get a bit, maybe tired when you’re saying something in parliament and mistakes happen. She apologised for that, she gave the right figures.”
