How is the Tory government doing?

Hip Priest wrote:It's really funny how every time the shit really hits the fan and Boris should be on our TV screens giving us a full and comprehensive explanation about WTF is really going on, he takes himself off to some factory or other, puts on a white coat, mask and protective goggles, acts the dumb buffoon as usual and leaves his HOUSING Minister, FFS, (Robert Jenrik) to answer all the awkward questions on the morning news programmes.
I can't stand Jenrik, he's smarmy and irritating but I do feel really sorry for him. He's by far and away the best person they have who can act as a Government spokesman and answer awkward questions by not answering them at all and waffling on about something completely different. Because of this he gets lumbered with this kind of shit all the time.
Unfortunately for Hancock I think that once Cummings produces his assorted proof documents he will be dead in the water. Even having Sluffy in his corner making excuses for his incompetence won't be enough to save him.

I've got to tip my hat to you HP, seems my message is starting to get through.

Let us indeed wait and see what the evidence is before we lynch anyone.

You've still clearly not grasped (possibly you never will) that I am NOT a supporter of Hancock, Johnson, the Tory Party, or even the likes of Ken Anderson or government cronyism or sleaze - or anyone or anything else - but what I do, constantly, say is judge on the facts not on what you wish it to be.

If Hancock, Johson or anyone else is proved to have acted unlawfully then lock them up - I don't have any problem with that - what I do have a problem with is judging them guilty on no proof whatsoever and based solely and simply on just not liking them.

Don't you think it is funny that only a few weeks ago some on here would never, ever, believe a word Cummings said but lo and behold now he saying something they like they believe every single word he now says as gospel!

It makes me smile anyway.

If he's got a smoking gun or two then let us all see them - until then all we have are the words of someone with the front to sit and face us on national telly and tell us a clear lie about his trip to get his eyesight tested up at Barnard Castle.

To be honest I do hope he delivers those smoking guns but my money is on that he can't and it is all spin against Hancock and Johnson who he clearly now hates.

Should be fun watching how things develop though.

Just been reading this -

Data from Public Health England (PHE) released on Thursday found the transfer of patients with Covid from hospital to care homes resulted in 286 deaths. It said 96 outbreaks in care homes were related to this problem – about 1.6% of all care home outbreaks – and that the vast majority of these were identified during a matter of weeks in March and April 2020.

While PHE said the number of care home outbreaks seeded by hospital patients being discharged with the virus was “relatively small”, the “potential for their preventability … must be fully acknowledged”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/27/matt-hancock-not-all-patients-sent-care-homes-tested-covid

Bit of a difference between Wanderlust's implied claim of 25,000 deaths and 286 actual deaths but he's never let facts get in the way of his bile and hatred before has he?

Got to be said though that even 286 is 286 too many if they could have reasonably been avoided.

Hip Priest wrote:It's really funny how every time the shit really hits the fan and Boris should be on our TV screens giving us a full and comprehensive explanation about WTF is really going on, he takes himself off to some factory or other, puts on a white coat, mask and protective goggles, acts the dumb buffoon as usual and leaves his HOUSING Minister, FFS, (Robert Jenrik) to answer all the awkward questions on the morning news programmes.
I can't stand Jenrik, he's smarmy and irritating but I do feel really sorry for him. He's by far and away the best person they have who can act as a Government spokesman and answer awkward questions by not answering them at all and waffling on about something completely different. Because of this he gets lumbered with this kind of shit all the time.
Unfortunately for Hancock I think that once Cummings produces his assorted proof documents he will be dead in the water. Even having Sluffy in his corner making excuses for his incompetence won't be enough to save him.

Jenrick was another minister who, like Cummings, broke the government's own rules about travelling at the height of the pandemic. He went to Shropshire and Hereford for a couple of weeks while the rest of us were ordered to stay at home.
Somehow, he has escaped the sort of condemnation that Cummings has had to face. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/09/cabinet-minister-robert-jenrick-visited-his-parents-during-covid-19-lockdown

He is also at the forefront of allegations about cronyism.

Here, on the BBC's website this morning, is what the head of care homes has to say about "the protective ring":

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-57278939

okocha wrote:Here, on the BBC's website this morning, is what the head of care homes has to say about "the protective ring":

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-57278939

That's a link to a rolling news page Okocha.
Here's the quote:

The head of the National Care Association has rejected a claim by the government last year that it had placed a "protective shield" around care homes early in the pandemic.
Nadra Ahmed calls the claim "absolute rubbish".
"There was no shield," she tells the BBC's Question Time. "I think that was an utterance that came about in a form of embarrassment, perhaps, because nothing had been done for social care."
Social care "ended up being that forgotten front line", she adds.
It comes as Health Secretary Matt Hancock faces growing pressure over the deaths of thousands of care home residents during the pandemic.

Hancock has just had the dreaded "vote of confidence" from Bozo. Nothing more. No discussion, claims or answers so it looks like his handlers have closed him down and the distancing has begun.

wanderlust wrote:Hancock has just had the dreaded "vote of confidence" from Bozo. Nothing more. No discussion, claims or answers so it looks like his handlers have closed him down and the distancing has begun.

I know it it isn't your thing at all but shall we jusy list out the allegation and the facts before joining the lynch mob?

ALLEGATION

In his testimony to a select committee on Wednesday, Mr Cummings said: "We were told categorically in March that people would be tested before they went back to care homes. We only subsequently found out that that hadn't happened.

"The government rhetoric was we put a shield around care homes - it was complete nonsense.

"Quite the opposite of putting a shield around them, we sent people with Covid back to the care homes."

FACT

1 - How many people were sent from hospitals back to care homes -

The decision to allow hospital patients in England to be discharged to care homes without Covid-19 tests at the start of the pandemic has been described as "reckless" by MPs.

The Public Accounts Committee said there had clearly been an "emerging problem" with official advice before it was "belatedly" changed in April.

It accused ministers of being slow to support social care during the crisis.

The government said it had been "working closely" with the sector.

The committee said around 25,000 patients were discharged into care homes in England between mid-March and mid-April to free up hospital beds.

After initially saying a negative result was not required before discharging patients, the government later said on 15 April all patients would be tested.

In a highly critical report, the cross-party committee said the initial decision to allow untested patients into care homes was an "appalling error".

The committee says that, by September, the government should review which care homes took discharged patients, and how many went on to have outbreaks.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53574265

2 - How many people actually died as a result -

The PHE Epidemiology Cell (Epi Cell) developed a process to derive residential property
classifications of laboratory confirmed COVID-19 cases in collaboration with the PHE
GIS Cell. This facilitated identification of cases residing in care homes. Hospital
discharge records were linked to these records to identify care home residents who may
have acquired their COVID-19 infection whilst in hospital and subsequent to their
discharge, their care homes experienced an outbreak of COVID-19. In summary:
• from 30 January to 12 October 2020, there were a total of 43,398 care home
residents identified with a laboratory confirmed positive COVID-19 test result
• of these, 35,760 (82.4%) were involved in an outbreak, equivalent to a total of 5,882
outbreaks
• 1.6% (n=97) of outbreaks were identified as potentially seeded from hospital
associated COVID-19 infection, with a total of 806 (1.2%) care home residents with
confirmed infection associated with these outbreaks
• the majority of these potentially hospital-seeded care home outbreaks were identified
in March to mid-April 2020, with none identified from the end of July until September
where a few recent cases have emerged
The findings of this report suggest hospital associated seeding accounted for a small
proportion of all care home outbreaks. Policies on systematic testing prior to hospital
discharge for patients discharged to care homes were introduced on 15 April 2020. This
may have supported the decline seen in these types of outbreaks, contributing to an
overall reduction in care home cases.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/983349/Data_linkage_approach_to_assessing_the_contribution_of_hospital-associated_SARS-CoV-2_infection_to_care_home_outbreaks_in_England.pdf#page4

The diagram on page 10 of the report (which I can't seem to copy and paste on to here for some reason?) states this resulted in 286 deaths.

3 - What was the actual cause of the vast bulk of care home deaths from Covid?

Speaking to the BBC, committee chair Meg Hillier acknowledged there had been limited data about the virus when early decisions were made; however she said there was also a long-term lack of understanding at the health department about how the care sector works.

"The fact that there are people on low pay not taking sick leave, moving from home to home were things that were risk elements - if you had better understanding of any impact of any disease on a care home you would have understood the implications," she said.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53574265

4 - What testing capacity did the nation have at the start of the pandemic

In its evidence to the committee, Public Health England said nationwide testing capacity was limited to 3,500 tests per day at the start of the crisis.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53574265


Conclusions from the above.

1 - Did Hancock lie about sending hospital patients back to care homes without a test in March as Cummings claim?

So far we don't know.

2 - How many deaths did hospital returns to care homes actually cause -

286.

This 286 figure you keep quoting. Isn’t that in relation to care home patients that had a positive test? 

If that is the case then surely the figure is misleading, as most weren’t being tested?

Even if it is, bragging about ‘only’ 286 deaths really does boggle the mind.

T.R.O.Y. wrote:This 286 figure you keep quoting. Isn’t that in relation to care home patients that had a positive test? 

If that is the case then surely the figure is misleading, as most weren’t being tested?

Even if it is, bragging about ‘only’ 286 deaths really does boggle the mind.

First of all I'm NOT bragging...

Sluffy wrote:Got to be said though that even 286 is 286 too many if they could have reasonably been avoided.

...shame on you for even thinking that of me.

And no the 286 is the actual total deaths in care homes resulting from an initial discharge from hospital - the diagram on page 10 on the link above shows that only 91 cases discharge from hospitals to care homes resulted in further deaths from care home residents who had not been to hospital.

To over simplify 91 people came from hospital with Covid, infected 195 others and they all died.

Sad and possibly an unnecessary loss of life but certainly nothing like the 45,000 Covid deaths that have been recorded in care homes.

Maybe it would be helpful to explain the stats even further for you.

The diagram shows that there were 43,398 care home Covid outbreaks.

The study then looked at how many of these outbreaks had recently links to hospital which was 14,857.

They then broke it down as to how many of them EDIT discarged from 'linked to a hospital' had been in a care home when the outbreak happened - 11,777

They then broke that down to where the outbreak started  - from an hospital - 1,744 and from the community (ie care workers) - 10,033

They then broke it down to where these people were discharged to - it found that many didn't return to their care homes - 501 died in hospital, 383 were not discharged (I assume they died either from other causes or outside the 28 day Covid test period?) 39 discharged somewhere else (I'm not sure what that means - hospices perhaps?) - so all these cases didn't return to care homes - it continues that 253 were discharged to care homes, 555 to their usual address (I assume by that that these people went to their own homes to die with their family around them?) and 13 unknown discharges.

Anyway all these remaining 821 cases were added together as those who 'seeded' cases in the care homes.

The report showed that only 97 hospital seeded outbreaks at care homes happened though, so I assume multiple cases from the 821 people must have gone to the same care homes (which at an average of 8 per home seems a lot to me?  Maybe most of the 555 who returned to their homes never went back into care homes which would bring the average down to a more reasonable average 2 to 3 per care home?).

Finally the report ends by saying that the 97 hospital seeded Covid cases ended up causing a total of 286 deaths.

Hope my breakdown is helpful to you in some way.

If you do however have any questions on the stats please feel free to take them up with Public Health England that undertook the investigation and report.

Sluffy wrote:

First of all I'm NOT bragging...



...shame on you for even thinking that of me.

And no the 286 is the actual total deaths in care homes resulting from an initial discharge from hospital - the diagram on page 10 on the link above shows that only 91 cases discharge from hospitals to care homes resulted in further deaths from care home residents who had not been to hospital.

To over simplify 91 people came from hospital with Covid, infected 195 others and they all died.

Sad and possibly an unnecessary loss of life but certainly nothing like the 45,000 Covid deaths that have been recorded in care homes.

I meant the officials quoting that figure not you. But apologies that wasn’t clear.

I think you’ve missed my point though. The figure in the report is following a positive covid test. If the majority weren’t being tested then it doesn’t give us anything like a complete picture.

T.R.O.Y. wrote:

Sluffy wrote:

First of all I'm NOT bragging...



...shame on you for even thinking that of me.

And no the 286 is the actual total deaths in care homes resulting from an initial discharge from hospital - the diagram on page 10 on the link above shows that only 91 cases discharge from hospitals to care homes resulted in further deaths from care home residents who had not been to hospital.

To over simplify 91 people came from hospital with Covid, infected 195 others and they all died.

Sad and possibly an unnecessary loss of life but certainly nothing like the 45,000 Covid deaths that have been recorded in care homes.

I meant the officials quoting that figure not you. But apologies that wasn’t clear.

I think you’ve missed my point though. The figure in the report is following a positive covid test. If the majority weren’t being tested then it doesn’t give us anything like a complete picture.

Apology accepted.

I don't believe the officials or the report were bragging either.

And no, as I've tried to explain above they did it the other way around - they looked at all care home outbreaks as their start point and worked backwards to see what links these outbreaks had from people who had been discharged from the hospitals.

So it covers EVERYONE who were discharged from hospitals to care homes- whether they were Covid tested or not.

Statement from National Care Association. I think this shows the danger of taking a piece of limited piece of research and presenting it as indisputable fact. 

We know very little for certain at this point and all theories should be presented as such.

‘The PHE Report delivers an unhelpful analysis of data that provides at best a partial picture and at worst an unrecognisable representation of the impact that hospital discharge in the absence of testing had on the most vulnerable members of our society. The data attempts to almost completely absolve the discharge programme from ‘seeding’ outbreaks within homes by presenting a set of data as complete, when in fact it was fundamentally flawed because of the very limitations of the testing regime in both hospitals and care homes.’

https://www.nationalcareforum.org.uk/draft/lets-stick-to-the-facts/

T.R.O.Y. wrote:Statement from National Care Association. I think this shows the danger of taking a piece of limited piece of research and presenting it as indisputable fact. 

We know very little for certain at this point and all theories should be presented as such.

‘The PHE Report delivers an unhelpful analysis of data that provides at best a partial picture and at worst an unrecognisable representation of the impact that hospital discharge in the absence of testing had on the most vulnerable members of our society. The data attempts to almost completely absolve the discharge programme from ‘seeding’ outbreaks within homes by presenting a set of data as complete, when in fact it was fundamentally flawed because of the very limitations of the testing regime in both hospitals and care homes.’

https://www.nationalcareforum.org.uk/draft/lets-stick-to-the-facts/

???

It is NOT a theory, it is an official government report!!!

With respect the NCR are the equivalent of what the Supporters Trust is to a football club.

They are a voluntary group representing their members interests.

They are part of the Care Providers Alliance in the same way as the ST's are part of the Football Suporters Association.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Care_Provider_Alliance

The Public Health England report was based on the actual scientific findings and not on people's perceptions such as the NCR's

Taken from the PHE report -

Data sources
The data sources were:
• Second Generation Surveillance System (SGSS) data set of all laboratory confirmed
COVID-19 cases reported to PHE from NHS PHE laboratories and private
laboratories in England (Pillars 1 and 2)
• Ordnance Survey (OS) AddressBase, OS CQC care home reference, and Master
Patient Index used to identify unique property reference number (UPRN) and property
classification
• Emergency Care Data set (ECDS) used to identify A&E attendance with subsequent
hospital admission
• Secondary User Service (SUS) Admitted Patient Care to identify hospital admission
Address data source
Full patient address data are available within the SGSS COVID-19 view. Two address
data fields are available:
1. Full residential address derived from the demographic batch service (DBS) identified
through successful tracing of patient details against NHS summary care records.
2. Residential address reported by the testing laboratory. This alternative address is not
a mandatory field and dependent on reporting by the case or provider via the testing
laboratory.Contribution of hospital-associated SARS-CoV-2 infection to care home outbreaks in England
For the purposes of identifying property types in COVID-19 positive cases, the alternative
address was preferentially used for address matching on the basis of this representing
the most recently documented residential address, facilitating capture of addresses for
individuals who may be housed in temporary accommodation or recently relocated.


The SGSS mention above is the key to the integrity of the report - it is basically the virus audit trail of all the Covid cases

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-covid-19-surveillance-reports/sources-of-covid-19-systems

Believe me (or don't!) but the report and it's findings are genuine based on tracing back from the care homes to where Covid was 'imported' in from and it turns out that extremely few cases were seeded from hospitals.

The report is factual.

I think the NCA, like you had, doesn't comprehend that the report starts from the care homes and works backwards to the hospitals and NOT from the hospitals to the care homes.

By looking at the care home outbreaks and working backwards it takes into account ALL people discharged from hospitals irrespective if they had been tested or not.

This can even be clearly shown in the report itself - (page 12 of 21)

Of the 97 cases identified as potentially seeding care home outbreaks, 56 (58%) had a
specimen date during their hospital stay (hospital onset), the remaining cases had their
positive specimen within 14 days of their discharge (community-onset).

What this says is of the 97 seeding cases from hospital to care homes the info shows that 56 HAD a positive test whilst at the hospital but the other 41 left WITHOUT a test.

Thus the report IS identifying everyone whether they were tested or not when discharged from hospital.

(I guess it begs the question why the hospitals discharged people involved in 56 'seeding' cases with a positive Covid result to care homes but that still wouldn't change the results of this report).

It's amazing that such deductive extrapolation is based on "cases reported to PHE by the laboratories" i.e. SSGS.
Do we assume that the laboratories were only able to report on cases that had been referred to them in the first instance i.e. the few who were actually tested? Surely they wouldn't even be aware of the cases that weren't?
And given that at that time very very few people were tested it is reasonable to assume that actual number of patients they were aware of was a small percentage of the true figure.

The number of people tested i.e. the few that the laboratories were actually aware of does not equal the number of people who had contracted the virus.

And what does "linked to a hospital" actually mean and how is causality established?

If anything this report not only exposes faulty - and perhaps politically motivated reasoning - but also shines a light at the appalling testing levels and Hancock's manipulation of the data.

Let me try and explain the best I can.

Every living 'thing' has DNA including Covid.

Well something called 'genome' basically 'lists' everything that goes in to the 'thing' that makes it 'live' - this list goes beyond just DNA if you will (I simply mention DNA to begin with in order to make it easier to grasp the idea).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome

As we know Covid may be only a virus but it is 'alive' and it also mutates (changes) and thus it's genome 'list' (sequence) slightly alters from time to time - imagine it if you will as its 'fingerprint' - and each change creates a slightly different fingerprint - this sequencing is how the scientists have been monitoring the changes in Covid, from when it jumped spices from bats in to humans and how it has been recording it constantly evolving ever since.

The scientists doing the sequencing can thus start to predict how it might develop as well as be able to follow its evolution trail backwards, for instance they identified all the varius different 'strains' of Covid that were brought back from around the world following the ending of the first lockdown when people went abroad for their summer holidays.

In short scientists map and sequence the genome changes and follow the virus continued evolution or alternative can trace it back to its source - which incidently no human genome sequence as yet been found prior to Wuhan!

Covid postive samples have been being sent from the very begining of the pandemic for such monitoring, the scientists if you will have built up a family tree in this country of where each individual genome variations were first identified and from which specific area it was from.

Basically the study identified the various unique 'fingerprints' from the care homes positive tests, then looked at which people had been to hospital immeadiately prior to the outbrake and see if they matched the positive Covid samples from those hospitals (the samples would have been matched to those already admitted into hospital with Covid at that time).

If both care home and hospital have the same genome sequence then it was certain that the seeding came from there and of course if the genome sequence didn't then it was impossible that the care home outbreak was seeded from discharged patients from those particular hospitals at that time. (Think if you will how DNA can be matched to show say who is your father and who isn't in paternity tests).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_genome_sequencing

Maybe this BBC article explains it much better than I have and also shows the key involvement of SSGS in all of this -

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55413666

As for this bit...

wanderlust wrote:If anything this report not only exposes faulty - and perhaps politically motivated reasoning - but also shines a light at the appalling testing levels and Hancock's manipulation of the data.

...you are clearly obsessed with hatred.

Politically motivated reasoning and Hancock's manipulation of the data....!!!!

Yeah right it is all just one massive conspiracy and everybody is involved in it...

You're a complete and utter crackpot mate if you genuinely believe the stuff you post on here.

Sluffy, you have taken one study and presented it as bullet proof. Without considering the limitations in data collection - namely very limited testing in both hospitals and care homes. Those limitations are why it needs to be presented as a theory at this point.

T.R.O.Y. wrote:Sluffy, you have taken one study and presented it as bullet proof. Without considering the limitations in data collection - namely very limited testing in both hospitals and care homes. Those limitations are why it needs to be presented as a theory at this point.

What aren't you understanding?

Every care home outbreak was tested - that's why they knew they had a Covid outbreak.  Every hospital was tested also - that's why they knew they were looking after Covid patients in their isolation wards.  The question being asked is did the hospitals patients on non covid wards somehow catch covid whilst in the hospital setting and bring it back to their care homes and thus seed an outbreak there.

As over simplified as I can put this, the report has been compiled on DNA analysis of each care home's Covid outbreak and then matched against the DNA analysis of every hospital's (Covid cases they were dealing with at the time) their residents had been received from prior to the outbreak.

The report was 'commissioned' by SAGE

This is what Dr Jenny Harries (Chief Executive of the UK Health Security Agency)(she was Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England to Chris Whitty previously - so I have no doubts whatsoever about her integrity) said at the national government briefing on Thursday (27th May) -

I think actually one of the things that sometimes gets forgotten in some of the conversations about testing is the really important thing is not testing says you have a problem, the intervention is very much about isolation. So when an individual leaves, whether it be a hospital setting, the guidance is very much about ensuring that there is appropriate infection prevention control, both in the care home setting, but actually in separating that individual from others because the test only gives you the result on the day. The really important thing is to be able to be sure that a patient doesn’t become symptomatic and be able to transmit infection for the subsequent incubation period. So from an interventional perspective, that is critical.

I think the only other thing I would say is it’s, the elderly and the vulnerable in residential settings have been a focus, actually, of a care subgroup in the Sage modeling group. Actually, I chaired that group specifically to try and understand precisely where the risks were predominantly in residents going into care homes and because of the very high infection rates, and there were two pieces of work commissioned around that. Although the data is quite complex to interpret, it was very clear at the end of this work that there are different ways for the virus to come into care homes and it can come from a hospital discharge, but that is definitely not the majority route of entry. It’s coming as community cases rise and care workers are going in and out as they do, because we need them to provide care. It’s coming in with community rates. We see that with schools as well. I think it’s just about really looking at the evidence of where transmission occurs, which is important.

https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/uk-downing-street-coronavirus-press-conference-with-matt-hancock-transcript-may-27
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rev_(company)

If you or the nutjob Wanderlust don't want to believe me that's fine, I'm only some random bloke on social media after all but if you don't want to believe the report then you are not believing SAGE, Whitty, Van-Tam and all the other medical experts who got to their top of their professions long before the likes of Boris, Cummings and Hancock came on the scene.

Do you really believe they aren't telling the truth in this report just because it doesn't give the outcome you want to see?  Do you reject the science behind it all, is DNA profiling (which in simple terms this report is all about) not to be believed?

Clearly Wanderlust does because they've been leant on politically just to save Hancock!!!

Completely laughable of him really.

Sluffy wrote:Every care home outbreak was tested - that's why they knew they had a Covid outbreak.

They knew there was an outbreak when people got ill and died.
Testing for people being discharged into care homes only commenced on April 15th and that was in very small numbers.
There was no testing in care homes for months and care home staff only became eligible for testing on 29th April and they were actually tested in the weeks and months after that. Regular testing in care homes didn't even begin to be rolled out until July.
By the 7th of August there were already 29,542 excess deaths in care homes (source BMC)

Everything the government finally did to alleviate the care home crisis was a reaction to the unpalatable figures the public was seeing rather than proactive policy - which is why it was too little too late - the vast majority of care home tests occurred after tens of thousands of people had already died.
The figures used in the report are nonsense and you know it.
Too much Daily Fail is a bad thing.

Unfortunately you’re more bothered about tying to get one over Lust than actually taking the time to check what you’re saying.

Here’s how the NCA describe testing in care homes:

‘Again this approach to testing was very limited, with local teams only required to test up to (and in practice often less than) 5 symptomatic resident in any care home, with the outcome of that needing only 2 positive tests to declare an outbreak. At that point no further testing of residents was carried out for 28 days. This meant that firstly residents discharged to care homes were not in any way guaranteed to be part of the testing regime in care homes, and secondly that anyone who had acquired COVID within hospital and was asymptomatic would not have been picked up within this testing regime. These are points of fact.’

Do you understand why that limits the data so significantly? Anyone with an appreciation of data would look at that and see why the report is not foolproof. Unless you think the NCA are lying about the conditions in which tests were administered?