Boris Johnson said some nursing homes did not follow procedures to stem the spread of deaths from COVID-19
London:
Prime Minister Boris Johnson faced a mounting storm on Tuesday after saying that some nursing homes had failed to follow procedures to stem the spread of deaths from COVID-19, sparking a charge that he was trying to rewrite the story.
Britain has one of the highest death rates in the world with COVID-19, with more than 44,000, with around 20,000 deaths in nursing homes, according to government statistics.
While government has been heavily criticized by opposition politicians and some doctors for slow delivery of protective clothing and testing to nursing homes, Johnson appeared to suggest that outbreaks were responsible for nursing homes themselves.
“We have discovered that too many nursing homes have not really followed the procedures as they could have, but we are learning lessons,” said Johnson on Monday.
Mark Adams, general manager of charity Community Integrated Care, said he was “incredibly disappointed” with Johnson’s comments, calling them clumsy and cowardly, adding that they represented a dystopian rewriting of history.
“To get a disposable comment, to blame the social protection system almost in a glance, and not to raise your hand to start too late, to do the wrong things, to make mistakes after the mistakes, it is frankly unacceptable,” he said. he said on BBC radio.
“If that is really his point of view, I think we are almost entering an alternative Kafkaesque reality.”
A special Reuters report explained in detail how the government is working to prevent emergency services from being overwhelmed by residents of nursing homes and staff exposed to COVID-19.
To free up hospital beds, many patients were sent to homes for the elderly and vulnerable, many without being tested for coronavirus.
Following his comments, a Johnson spokesperson said, “Throughout this crisis, nursing homes have done a brilliant job under very difficult circumstances.
“The Prime Minister stressed that no one knew what the right procedures were because the extent of asymptomatic transmission was not known at the time,” he said.
(Report by Alistair Smout and David Milliken; Editing by Nick Macfie)
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
