Testimonies about care home deaths

John Campbell

John Campbell: “How can this be in care facilities? People not being given fluids and food? How can this be? I spent my life teaching people to look after the sick and ah… you do talk about food and nutrition, we do lectures on it of course, but you know it just seems so obvious it scarcely needs to be mentioned.”

Scottish Covid Inquiry:

Shelagh McCall KC, representing bereaved relatives:

Residents may have been "neglected and left to starve"

Blanket ban on visitors

Phone calls "went unanswered over days and sometimes weeks"

Relatives, treated "with disdain" and "fobbed off"

Families told relatives were fine only to get a sudden hurried phone call that they were dying

Relatives reported, "a significant deterioration of their loved ones' physical and mental health" that "was nothing to do with Covid 19"

"some suspect that their loved one was suffering from neglect, dehydration and starvation"

"That residents may have been neglected and left to starve, that families are not sure that they were told the truth about their relative's cause of death, that the usual process for the certification or death was process for the certification of death was departed from."

"We anticipate that the inquiry will hear that people were pressured to agree to sign do not resuscitate notices, and that people were not resuscitated even though no such notice was in place”

Scottish Covid Bereaved

Discharging untested hospital patients into care homes, "ultimately a death sentence for the elderly"

March, April and May 2020

113 hospital patients, tested positive, transferred to care homes

3,061 transferred from hospital to care homes without being tested

Covid allowed to enter care homes "spread like wildfire"