Hancock blames care home staff for Covid spread among elderly

But he is asked nothing on jab passports and nothing on inaccurate Imperial College in missed opportunity

By Mark Sharman

CARE HOME staff caused the spread of Covid-19 among elderly residents, according to the former Health Minister Matt Hancock. And he admits it was a mistake not to spot that earlier.

In a long interview on Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO podcast, Hancock insisted it was ‘a false narrative’ that the virus had spread from patients transferred from hospital. He said they accounted for only two per cent of cases.

“The truth is – and we couldn’t, didn’t, want to say it at the time because we didn’t want to demotivate people – but the truth is that the main route of the virus getting into care homes, sadly, was from staff, because staff live in the community and this disease was rife in the community. But I didn’t want to stand at that podium and give the impression I was blaming staff.”

He said the Government decided staff should work in one home only and admitted “we should have spotted that earlier”.

Hancock, dressed in a turtle neck sweater, light blue jeans and white trainers, also told how he stopped the idea of herd immunity being the accepted policy in 2020, despite being discussed by SAGE, the Government’s scientific advisory group.

In a revealing answer he said: “The truth is that some people were pushing the herd immunity idea and then it bubbled up and came to a head. I went out and killed it. It was, like, ‘no we are not doing that’.

“Once the data came out in about May, that showed that only this tiny proportion of the public had antibodies and had had exposure, therefore it was obvious and categorically impossible to get to the level of antibodies you need across society.

“The people that had been promoting herd immunity were now scientifically and evidentially wrong.

“Once we got to that point there was only one way out – and that was the vaccine. I knew that the science was going to save us.”

Interviewer Bartlett asked about Hancock’s resignation after CCTV footage showed him kissing his adviser Gina Coladangelo in his Westminster office. It was an uncomfortable interlude, but Hancock replied: “I resigned because I broke the social distancing guidelines.

“By then they weren’t actually rules, they weren’t the law, but that’s not the point. The point is that they were guidelines that I’d been proposing. That happened because I fell in love with someone.”

News Uncut notes that it is this final subject that attracted attention across almost all mainstream media, rather than the more serious points that could have led to further investigation.

Similarly, it was disappointing that Steven Bartlett himself seems to be locked into the Government narrative on Covid. He quoted 21,000 deaths (could they have been avoided with an earlier lockdown?) and 160,000 deaths overall, when it has been well-established that the actual number from and not with Covid is significantly less than that at 17,371.

And he could have given his interview much more weight if, over the one hour and 45 minutes, he would have asked about the grossly inaccurate modelling by Imperial College, the true effect of lockdowns, vaccine efficacy, how the booster jabs seem to be increasing infections and why we are seeing so many vaccine injuries and deaths.

And what are his views now on vaccine passports and the thousands of care workers who lost their jobs?

This was a missed opportunity, given that it was Hancock’s first major interview since resigning over a year ago.

Steve Bartlett, for all his business acumen, is no Jeremy Paxman.