Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what advice he received from the Government's Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific Adviser on the risk of covid-19 infections as a result of transferring patients from hospitals to care homes in March 2020.

This information is not held in the format requested.

During the pandemic, Ministers received scientific and clinical advice from a variety of sources, in addition to advice from the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) Sir Patrick Vallance and the Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Professor Sir Chris Whitty. This included advice informed by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), jointly chaired by the CSA and CMO. SAGE is comprised of scientific experts from a range of disciplines and considered the following evidence which informed this policy:

The ‘SPI-M-O: Consensus view on behavioural and social interventions, 16 March 2020’ is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/spi-m-o-consensus-view-on-behavioural-and-social-interventions-16-march-2020

The minutes of the ‘Sixteenth SAGE meeting on Wuhan Coronavirus (Covid-19), 16th March 2020’ is available at the following link:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1068118/S0384_Sixteenth_SAGE_meeting_on_Wuhan_Coronavirus.pdf

Imperial College London’s ‘Report 9 - Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand’ is available at the following link:

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-9-impact-of-npis-on-covid-19/