Covid: Care homes 'safest possible environment' for patients

The Scottish government tried to create the "safest environment possible" in care homes early in the Covid pandemic, the deputy first minister has said.

Bereaved families are considering legal action after a ruling in England that discharging untested hospital patients to care homes was unlawful.

A Scottish public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic is ongoing.

Mr Swinney said this inquiry did "not need" to last years, and said it would provide full and proper answers.

The deputy first minister told BBC Scotland's The Sunday Show that the Scottish government's approach was "similar, but not identical" to UK government policy.

• Care home ruling could prompt Scottish legal cases

• Discharging Covid patients to care homes 'unlawful'

He said ministers made decisions based on "emerging scientific discussions" in the early days of the pandemic.

"At the time, what was trying to be achieved was to try to create the safest environment possible for everyone concerned," he said.

"We knew from international experience that our hospitals were going to come under enormous pressure.

"The judgement was how can we create - in that context of enormous risk of infection in our hospitals - the safest environment for individuals who had no reason to still be in, because they were clinically safe to be supported in a care home or in their own home."

Families say lives could have been saved if there had been testing from start of the pandemic

Mr Swinney highlighted government guidance from March 2020 that advised care homes to isolate residents, reduce visits and communal activity, and ensure discharged patients had been clinically assessed.

However, he said it was "fundamental" that criticism of the government's handling of events should be explored by the inquiry.

He added: "It is important that all the issues raised, the experience of families who have lost loved ones, are properly and fully examined."

Mr Swinney said there had been agreement from opposition parties at the time, that the Scottish government should encourage patients to be discharged. He said ministers had "faced cross-party pressure" to do so.

In the early days of the pandemic more than half of the elderly hospital patients discharged to nearly 200 Scottish care homes had not been tested for Covid.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later accepted that this practice had cost lives.

'Lives could have been saved'

Jude Kilbee's father passed away from Covid in a care home in May 2020. She told The Sunday Show she believes a lot of lives would have been saved if the government had responded faster to testing.

She said: "There were plenty of signs this was not good. To take so long to test people, when the WHO was saying test, test, test, isn't good enough."

Mrs Kilbee said she supports the Scottish public inquiry, but said it seemed that progress "had stalled".

She added: "So many families have suffered. Most of us in this position are fighting for this rather than just going away and trying to heal.

"We don't want other families to go through what we've been through."

The Scottish public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic, led by Lady Poole, will scrutinise decisions that were taken over the course of the crisis.

Mr Swinney was asked on The Sunday Show if the inquiry could "last years".

"I don't think that needs to be the case," he replied.

"I think Lady Poole will be mindful, having met bereaved families herself, of the importance of answers being brought forward as soon as we can be certain of the facts."

• Nearly 200 care homes took mainly untested patients

Former Labour MSP Neil Findlay, whose mother was in care home in early 2020, told the programme it was "basic and common sense" not to send untested people back into care homes.

He said: "I think that's a shameful situation to put these families in. But I know some of these families, they will be determined to get justice."

Scottish Conservative shadow health minister, Craig Hoy MSP, said families deserved answers about government decision making "as quickly as possible".

He added: "Only by getting to those facts will they get the justice, and then ultimately the closure that they want, so they can properly grieve the family members that they lost."