Daughter of Covid-19 victim says Scottish care home residents 'written off' amid testing row

The family of a pensioner who died after contracting coronavirus yesterday claimed care home residents were "written off" as Nicola Sturgeon came under more pressure over her government moving them out of hospital without being tested.

Sandra O'Neill said her mother, who passed away on April 8 in a home, suffered a "horrible death" because she was not admitted to hospital and given oxygen treatment.

She said her 88-year-old mother, Mary Masson, contracted the disease shortly after another female resident was discharged from hospital despite still being ill.

A video posted on Facebook showed the resident "struggling for breath and coughing", she said, but the staff at the Almond Court care home in Drumchapel, Glasgow did not wear protective clothing.

Although she said Ms Sturgeon's "intentions were honourable", she said this was "not good enough" and more residents should have been sent to hospital for better treatment.

Jackson Carlaw, the Scottish Tory leader, raised the case at First Minister's Questions and demanded a public inquiry into the SNP's previous policy of allowing elderly hospital patients to return to homes to free up beds.

It came after Ms Sturgeon earlier this week appeared to accept that transferring hundreds of untested patients out of hospitals into care homes contributed to Scotland's huge coronavirus death toll in the institutions.

The First Minister said that with the benefit of hindsight she would “come to a different conclusion” about moving so many vulnerable people without testing them for the virus.

The Scottish Government admitted last week that 921 delayed discharge patients - elderly people fit enough to leave hospital but without somewhere suitable to go - were moved to care homes in March alone.

It was not until April 21 that a policy for mandatory testing of all new care home residents was announced by the SNP government.

The National Records of Scotland disclosed the care home death toll has reached 1,749, 46 per cent of the coronavirus total. This compares with around 27 per cent in England and Wales.

Responding to Mr Carlaw at First Minister's Questions, Ms Sturgeon conceded a public inquiry will be staged into all aspects of the crisis but said: "I invite people to look at the situation we faced at the time."

She recalled the horrific scenes from Italy before the virus hit the UK and said it would have been "unthinkable" to leave elderly people in hospital if they were well enough to be discharged "as it would have put them at huge risk."

The First Minister said: "I am sure that many of them would have died in those circumstances, and I think that I would be getting asked different questions right now."

Ms O'Neill, 67, said the home's staff were "amazing" but her mother "should have been taken into hospital and given oxygen."

She said: "That’s what haunts me that she didn’t get the opportunity to have treatment, it must have been a horrible death not having oxygen.

"I want to know how many people have been taken the other way from care homes to hospitals, to see if people are getting treatment"

She added: "I think they were written off. I can understand why you have to prioritise but I don’t see why they were denied some kind of treatment."

Ms O'Neill described how a resident returned from hospital to the care home on Mar 17 and she received an email six days later stating there was a confirmed case in the home.

By April 5 "the residents were all lethargic", she said, and the lady who had returned from hospital was the first to die. Nine out of 20 residents on her mother's floor passed away.

Mr Carlaw said: "With or without hindsight, the situation in Scotland’s care homes is a national disgrace. The case raised by Sandra O’Neill will be familiar to families across Scotland.

“Only a full public inquiry will deliver those answers and force this SNP government to come clean about its role in sending contagious patients back to mingle with the most vulnerable people in our society.”

A spokesman for Almond Court care home said: "Like many other care providers, we have sadly had first-hand experience in dealing with coronavirus in our care home, and some residents have sadly passed away with the virus."

He said Holmes Care, the operator, did not make any new admissions from people discharged from the hospital who had confirmed or suspected coronavirus between March and this month.