Dr Hilary Jones has said that he thinks the UK government "took their eye off the ball" when it came to care homes during the coronavirus pandemic.
This comes after grim figures from the Care Quality Commission yesterday revealed 4,343 deaths from April 10 to 24 in England alone in care homes – more than 300 a day.
Experts now believe more people are dying from the virus outside hospitals, casting doubt on Government claims the pandemic has peaked.
Speaking about the figures today on Good Morning Britain, Dr Hilary compared the UK to Sweden in how they had handled the crisis.
"Sweden also have a very big problem with their care homes," he explained. "They have this liberal lockdown, what they call an intelligent lockdown, in trusting people to be responsible to socially distance but not really have a formal lockdown like we did.
"Now they've sacrificed, on the alter of that liberalism, a lot of deaths in care homes. So they're getting criticised there."
He continued: "I think what happened here is we took our eye off the ball a little bit with care homes because we were visibly seeing a massive increase in younger, otherwise healthy, people going into hospitals and that got all the headlines.
"And we thought, we've got to protect those people and those looking after them.
"I don't think we were hiding what was going on in care homes, we just weren't aware enough compared to what was going on in hospitals.
"And we should have been because they're an example of a bubble - a family, a very big family under one roof."
*Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6am on ITV
