Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
No-test discharge to care homes like ‘putting live explosive in tinder box’

DISCHARGING hospital patients into care homes without testing them for Covid-19 was likened today to “putting live explosives into a tinder box.”

As Tory ministers tried to throw a protective shield around under-fire Health Secretary Matt Hancock, the boss of Britain’s biggest charitable social care provider said that care home residents “were seen as somehow an inevitable casualty.”

Methodist Homes chief executive Sam Monaghan said that half of the 40,000 people who died in the first wave of coronavirus had been care home residents.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
Prime Minister Andy Burnham delivers a speech during a visit to a care home in north London, on adult social care reform, July 29, 2026
Society / 29 July 2026
29 July 2026
Ambulances waiting at an Emergency Department (A&E) at the R
NHS Crisis / 30 July 2026
30 July 2026
Prime Minister Andy Burnham (centre) during a National Economic Council meeting at No 10 North, located in Heron House, central Manchester. Mr Burnham has said No 10 North is
Politics / 27 July 2026
27 July 2026

Burnham urged to create publicly-provided national care service before the end of the parliament, and to keep his promise to ditch neoliberalism

ALTERNATIVES: Al Amal (Hope) palliative care team, during the home-based care visit in 2021. Pic: Alamalrwanda/CC
Science and Society / 11 March 2026
11 March 2026

With more people dying each year and many spending their final days in institutions, researchers argue that wider access to palliative care could offer a more humane and cost-effective alternative, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT