Jungle MP Matt Hancock has been accused of “insulting” care home staff with a "deluded" account of the crisis in his coronavirus diaries.
The former Health Secretary was slammed for his Covid-19 memoirs in which he accused homes of being too slow to “grasp the fact” they needed to test residents.
He also blasted them for “unscrupulously” allowing employees to work with Covid.
“The main takeaway is that the virus is primarily being brought in by staff, not by elderly people who’ve been discharged from hospital,” he wrote on July 16, 2020.
The Government decided in the early stages of the outbreak to discharge potentially infectious Covid patients from hospitals into care homes without prior testing.
This has been blamed for the huge numbers of Covid deaths in care facilities during the first wave of the pandemic.
But the former Health Secretary claimed that just 1.2% of Covid cases in care homes were caused by patients being transferred from hospital.
"The vast majority of infections were brought in from the wider community, mainly by staff", Mr Hancock said.
National Care Association chairwoman Nadra Ahmed fumed: “ Matt Hancock ’s memory of events bears no resemblance to the facts.
"I think it’s a huge insult that he has written this book for his own gain. He did nothing and he’s learned nothing.”
She added: "Sadly, the account peddled by Matt Hancock bears no resemblance to the facts.
"Those of us who lived through some of the most harrowing times in the history of social care can only see this as a deluded version. He had no awareness of social care and its value then and this demonstrates he has learnt nothing since.”
He was also attacked by Vaccine Taskforce tsar Kate Bingham.
Mr Hancock has called “totally unreliable” and claimed there was a “massive blow-up” over her alleged obstructions, including trying to block vaccines from India.
Dame Kate said his diary extracts “suggest that, among other things, Matt was not aware of the published and agreed government vaccine procurement policy, did not read the reports about the work of the Vaccine Task Force, and did not understand the difference between complex biomedical manufacturing and PPE procurement”.
She added: “When it came to deployment, he has somehow forgotten the policy that he and other ministers were committed to at the time.”
