A care home chief has demanded an apology from Matt Hancock for the “zero support” the sector has had from the Government.
Rachel Beckett, chair of Wellburn Care Homes, said coronavirus testing has arrived “too little, too late” for elderly residents and staff.
It comes after the UK’s Covid-19 death toll jumped by 3,811 on Wednesday to top 26,000 when care home victims were factored in for the first time.
The Health Secretary announced the rollout of testing for over-65s and all residential home occupants, carers and visitors earlier this week.
But Ms Beckett, who runs 14 care homes in north east England, said the 24 cases among her residents could have been prevented if testing was available sooner.
“I'll be so bold as to say I would quite like an apology from Matt Hancock actually,” she told Sky News.
“His sweeping statement saying that he, Public Health [England] and CQC (Care Quality Commission) were doing everything they could to support the care sector since day one...”
She added: “We’ve had zero support from any other regulatory body… All we’re asking for is for the promises that are being made to actually happen.
“For instance, [in] one of our other homes that is being hit, if testing was available three weeks ago - we now have 24 confirmed cases - if we’d had that testing facility back then, we could have contained it and we could have isolated it and we wouldn’t have so many cases. It all feels like too little, too late.”
Ministers are under fire for not acting fast enough to prevent and record care home deaths in the community amid mounting concern over a lack of testing and PPE (personal protective equipment).
Yvonne Doyle, Public Health England’s medical director, has warned that the care home deaths are likely to be projected up even higher, raising fears Britain could be the worst-hit in Europe.
Asked at Wednesday’s Downing Street briefing whether the deaths could have been avoided with better testing and screening for care home residents, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said there was “always learning in an unprecedented crisis like this that we will want to feed back in”.
