Boris Johnson asked to apologise for care home deaths comments
Boris Johnson has come under fire for appearing to try to blame care homes for the high numbers of coronavirus deaths they have suffered.
The Prime Minister has been asked to apologise for the comments, which were labelled as “clumsy and cowardly” by the head of a social care charity.
Johnson made the comments yesterday in a trip to Yorkshire, where he said that more than 20,000 care home residents had died from Covid-19 because “too many care homes didn’t really follow the procedures”.
Business secretary Alok Sharma was quick to defend the Prime Minister this morning, telling the BBC that Johnson meant “nobody at the time knew what the correct procedures were”.
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Health secretary Matt Hancock also leapt to Johnson’s defence in the House of Commons today.
“Throughout this crisis care homes have done amazing work. The Prime Minister was explaining that because asymptomatic transmission was not known about the correct procedures were therefore not known,” he said.
“We have been constantly learning about this virus from the start and improving procedures all the way through.”
However, that has not stopped groups from calling for Johnson to apologise for the comments.
Mark Adams, boss of charity Community Integrated Care, told BBC Radio that his comments were a “travesty of leadership”.
He added: “f this is genuinely his view, I think we’re almost entering a Kafkaesque alternative reality where the government sets the rules, we follow them, they don’t like the results, they then deny setting the rules and blame the people that were trying to do their best.”
Shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth also demanded the Prime Minister apologise.