Coronavirus and Care Homes Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Bell Ribeiro-Addy
Main Page: Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Labour - Clapham and Brixton Hill)Department Debates - View all Bell Ribeiro-Addy's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
Coronavirus and Care Homes
Bell Ribeiro-Addy Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
Yes, absolutely. My hon. Friend texted me about that last week. I should have fixed it by now, then I would not have had the question. It absolutely needs to be sorted. We are working on it. We rolled out the testing centres at an unbelievable pace during April, so I hope he will forgive me and allow me to take a couple more days to fix the problem.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab) [V]
The Secretary of State may be aware of the comments of Martin Green, the chief executive of Care England, to the Health and Social Care Committee. He said:
“We should have been focusing on care homes from the start of this...What we saw at the start was a focus on the NHS”.
He also criticised the discharge of patients from hospitals into care homes and said that there were,
“people who either didn’t have a covid-19 status or were symptomatic who were discharged into care homes”,
which were
“full of people with underlying health conditions”.
Ministers, however, have said that fewer care home residents were discharged into care homes in March than in previous months this year. Will the Secretary of State commit to publishing those figures and the figures of how many people were discharged from hospital with covid-19 into care homes?
Matt Hancock
I am happy to look into that. Martin Green also said:
“It has become clear that in such a crisis we need further direction from Central Government.”
That is what we have tried to put in place by working with colleagues in local authorities to try to make sure that we get the best infection control procedures across the board.