Former health secretary Matt Hancock has blamed Public Health England (PHE) for failing to alert him to asymptomatic transmission of Covid after a court ruled that the government policy of discharging patients to care homes during the early stages of the pandemic was unlawful.
In a ruling on Wednesday, Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Garnham concluded that policies contained in documents released in March and early April 2020 were unlawful because they failed to take into account the risk to elderly and vulnerable residents from non-symptomatic transmission of the virus.
