Recommendation 23

Care England and the British Medical Association told us that the contingency planning process for a pandemic appeared to focus on the NHS at the expense of the social care sector despite some of the most vulnerable people being in social care. Care England told us this lack of planning included discharging 25,000 patients from hospitals into care homes, some without first testing them for COVID-19, even after it became clear that people could transmit the virus without ever having symptoms. In our report Readying the NHS and social care for the COVID-19 peak we previously highlighted that for around one month NHS trusts had been told to discharge medically-fit hospital patients before there was a policy to test patients for COVID-19 before discharging them to care homes. It considered this had contributed to the 20,000 deaths of people in care homes during the first wave of the pandemic. Care England told us that it was only after the high number of deaths became clear, that there was recognition that people in care homes were at the frontline of the pandemic.38 Care England also highlighted the high mortality rates among people with learning disabilities and told us domiciliary care and learning disabilities services appeared to be of a lower priority than other types of care when PPE was being distributed. The Department told us that it had now set up an e-portal, and that over 80% of eligible social care providers, including care homes and domiciliary care agency, and primary care providers had registered to use it to obtain free PPE.39 The experience of frontline staff