A junior health minister said “tough decisions” had to be taken during the coronavirus pandemic as she defended the UK government’s handling of the crisis on Wednesday after a leaked dossier of WhatsApp messages involving her former boss Matt Hancock raised fresh questions about the testing of people in care homes.
Speaking in the House of Commons, care minister Helen Whately, who held the same position during the first 18 months of the pandemic, said the situation within the care sector “was extremely difficult” at the time but argued that “selective snippets” of WhatsApp conversations only gave a “limited” insight into the decision-making process within government at the time.
Her comments came after the Daily Telegraph reported that Hancock, who was health secretary at the time, rejected advice by Professor Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, to test everyone going into care homes for Covid-19. Hancock on Wednesday denied rejecting clinical advice on care home testing, saying the Telegraph story was “flat wrong”.
Responding to an urgent question by the main opposition Labour party, Whateley told MPs: “The importance of testing was never in doubt and there was full agreement on that in every part of government, from the chief medical officer to the health secretary to the prime minister.
“But in a situation where we had the capacity to test at most a few thousand each day, tough decisions about prioritisation had to be made, decisions that were taken on the best public health advice available.”
Nearly 20,000 Covid-linked deaths in care homes in England and Wales were registered in the first three months of the pandemic, according to official data, leading to heavy criticism of the government of then-prime minister Boris Johnson. The issue is expected to be a key focus of the ongoing public inquiry into the UK’s response to the crisis.
The Telegraph said it had obtained about 100,000 messages sent between Hancock, other ministers and officials during the pandemic. The messages were passed to the newspaper by the journalist Isabel Oakeshott, a co-author of Hancock’s book about the pandemic and a strong critic of the decision to impose lockdowns.
The newspaper revealed some of the WhatsApp messages involving Hancock and some of his advisers ahead of the publication of a document about trying to control the spread of Covid in care homes in England.
According to the report Hancock messaged his advisers on April 14, 2020 that “Chris Whitty has done an evidence review and now recommend testing of all going into care homes . . . This is obviously a good positive step & we must put into the doc.”
The Telegraph reported several exchanges between Hancock and one of his aides on the issue, which revealed they had decided not to go ahead with Whitty’s recommendation and would only test people going into care homes from hospitals.
A spokesperson for Hancock said the “stolen” WhatsApp messages had been “doctored” to create a false story. He said Hancock had “enthusiastically accepted” a response to his request for advice from Whitty on April 14 that testing was needed for people going into care homes.
But later the same day, Hancock “convened an operational meeting on delivering testing for care homes where he was advised it was not currently possible to test everyone entering care homes, which he also accepted”. He said Hancock therefore “concluded that the testing of people leaving hospital for care homes should be prioritised because of the higher risks of transmission”.
In the document about controlling the spread of Covid in care homes published on April 15 2020, the government said it would “move to institute a policy of testing all residents prior to admission . . . This will begin with all those being discharged from hospital.”
At the time, the UK was trying to secure large volumes of Covid tests to improve the effectiveness of its response to the pandemic.
