COVID-19: Government broke the law by failing care home residents who died of coronavirus, High Court rules

The government broke the law by failing to protect more than 20,000 elderly or disabled care home residents who died after contracting COVID-19, the High Court has ruled.

The case was brought forward by Dr Cathy Gardner and Fay Harris whose fathers Michael Gibson and Donald Harris died after testing positive for coronavirus.

In a ruling on Wednesday, Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Garnham concluded that policies contained in documents released in March and early April 2020 were unlawful because they failed to take into account the risk to elderly and vulnerable residents from non-symptomatic transmission of the virus.

They said that, despite there being “growing awareness” of the risk of asymptomatic transmission throughout March 2020, there was no evidence that Matt Hancock, who was health secretary at the time, addressed the issue of the risk to care home residents of such transmission.

Dr Gardner, whose father died at the age of 88 in a care home in Bicester, Oxfordshire, in April 2020, said in a statement after the ruling: “My father, along with tens of thousands of other elderly and vulnerable people, tragically died in care homes in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I believed all along that my father and other residents of care homes were neglected and let down by the government.”

A barrister representing Dr Gardner and Ms Harris told the judges that more than 20,000 elderly or disabled care home residents had died from COVID-19 in England and Wales between March and June 2020.

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-government-broke-the-law-by-failing-care-home-residents-who-died-of-coronavirus-high-court-rules-12599918