Those of us with relatives in care already knew the Covid ‘protective ring’ was a sick joke – but what now?

My family was lucky – my mother, now 97, caught Covid and recovered. But the social care sector remains underfunded and vacancies are rising again, writes Andrew Grice

Matt Hancock, the health secretary at the time of the care homes decision (Tim Hammond / No10 Downing Street)

The High Court has issued a landmark ruling that the government policy of discharging patients from hospitals to care homes at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic was unlawful – a case won by two women whose fathers died from Covid-19.

The verdict is welcome but will not provide much relief to the families who lost loved ones after 25,000 people were sent from hospitals to care homes in March and April 2020, many without being tested for Covid.

Those of us with relatives in care homes knew that the government’s claim at the time to have thrown a “protective ring” around this under-resourced, overstretched sector was a sick joke. Yet again, it was the poor relation of the NHS. What ministers wanted was to avoid the gruesome TV pictures we had seen from Italy about hospitals being overwhelmed.