Bereaved Covid-19 campaigner wants accountability

A woman whose mother died in a care home during the coronavirus pandemic hopes decision makers will be held to account as part of a government-commissioned inquiry.

Deborah Doyle's mother, Sylvia Griffiths, died in April 2020 with suspected Covid-19 while she was a patient at a Sunderland care home.

A campaigner with Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, Doyle will be going to London on Tuesday to hear findings from the inquiry regarding the pandemic's impact on the care sector.

"I hope that there'll be accountability and I hope that they will name the people that made the decisions that we know from lived experience [meant] things went wrong," she said.

The findings to be presented by Baroness Heather Hallett form the sixth part of an expected 10.

Doyle and her campaign group have been critical of the government's actions during the pandemic, including the decision to discharge untested patients to care homes, and the scarcity of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the care sector.

More than 43,000 people died with Covid-19 in care homes between March 2020 and January 2022.

"The guidance that the government were giving out just wasn't adequate, it just wasn't appropriate, it was absolutely chaotic," Doyle said.

She said she hoped Baroness Hallett would make "very robust" recommendations so that, if a pandemic happened again, "we will be prepared".

The hardest thing was not being by the side of her 76-year-old mother when she died, due to restrictions on visiting in care homes at the time, Doyle said.

"I kind of understood at the time that that was necessary but it wouldn't have had to have been necessary had they had all the correct things in place."

In 2022 the High Court ruled unlawful the decision to discharge untested patients from hospitals to care homes, and ex Prime Minister Boris Johnson apologised to bereaved families.

Of Baroness Hallett's findings, Doyle said: "I'm pretty confident it's not going to be a good read, it'll be an emotional read."

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