Piers Morgan and Dr Hilary Jones clashed on Good Morning Britain after the presenter asked the doctor what the government had done well during the coronavirus pandemic.
The GMB host, 55, went on to make an awkward dig that Dr Hilary was a "stoic government defender", which the doctor denied.
Piers began by asking: "Is there one thing you can tell me that our government's experts did before anybody else, successfully?"
When Dr Hilary laughed, Piers insisted he was being serious.
"I've been thinking long and hard about that," Dr Hilary replied.
Piers interrupted him, saying: "One thing, one thing, where we were ahead of the game!"
Dr Hilary replied: "The NHS. We just have to say in maintaining an NHS that was able to cope with the peak."
But Piers retorted: "How did we do that? We chucked all the elderly into care homes."
"No, I'm talking about hospitals here," Dr Hilary replied as the atmosphere appeared to become tense.
"I know," Piers replied. "I'm just saying that the reason hospitals didn't get run over was because we took thousands of old people out of the hospitals and we put them into care homes where they infected people."
Dr Hilary responded that he thought it was "incredible" that the most vulnerable of our population was exposed to that level of risk and that the government "didn't realise it until it was too late".
He also said that there were many problems, including a lack of PPE.
However Piers said: "Just to summarise, you can't think of anything where we're ahead of the game."
Dr Hilary reluctantly replied: "Not off hand."
Later, Piers referred to Dr Hilary as a "stoic defender of the government".
The doctor responded: "I'm not a defender of anything!"
*Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6am on ITV
