Early testing could have 'eliminated' Covid risk, Gething admits

WALES' former health minister Vaughan Gething has accepted testing people for Covid as they were discharged from hospital in the early days of the pandemic, would have "eliminated risk".

- RUTH MOSALSKI

He is appearing, once more, at the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, this time to discuss the care sector.

He also said it would have been "unreasonable" for him to check pandemic plans.

He told the inquiry it was his understanding there were pandemic plans in place. Asked if he reviewed them, he said: "It would have been unreasonable" for him to do so.

"It would have been unreasonable for me to say that I wanted to review seven different health plans, or potentially 22 other local authority plans," he said.

Asked if anyone reviewed them, he said: "The health boards were due to review their plans."

There were many stories early in the pandemic about residents dying in care homes without ever being diagnosed and the inquiry had previously heard the Welsh Government had a deliberate policy to transfer elderly patients from hospitals to care homes during the pandemic without a test, even when they had Covid symptoms.

When Sir Frank Atherton appeared in front of the inquiry in March 2024, he was shown an email where he expressed grave concern about the Welsh Government care homes policy, in which he was asked how relatives would feel if there was an outbreak of Covid in care homes.

He told the inquiry that in April 2020, the Welsh Government was looking at what was happening in Italy, where hospitals were "filling up and falling over".

He explained "we were very anxious to avoid that in Wales and the UK." He said it was not an "easy decision" for ministers to make with discharging patients back to care homes, but he added that "care homes ought to be able to manage cases of infectious diseases by isolating people within there."