11 whole days after TuSC checked out the Care Inspectorate report on the infection-stricken Skye care home, BBC Scotland react in the public interest! For most of that time, they worked tirelessly with the GMB and the opposition parties to attempt to lay the dead at the First Minister’s feet.
They’ll report it now but don’t expect any of the dots to be joined up. Don’t expect to hear of the links between care home owners and the Tories. Don’t expect Disclosure Scotland to expose their tax avoidance, though a trip to the Cayman Islands will tempt them. Don’t expect to hear of the profits made or the low wages or the locked-away PPE. Don’t expect to see Jackie Baillie or that guy from the GMB for a while.
Don’t expect to hear more of the Uddingston care home, used by Jackson Carlaw to attack the FM, despite this:
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
From a BBC report on 5 May.
“A care home boss has insisted his firm has “nothing to hide” over a major outbreak on Skye that has cost the lives of three residents……
……Sir David Behan also revealed that 10 people died in an outbreak at another Scottish care home run by his firm……
….Sir David, HC One’s executive chairman, said nine patients were now self-isolating at the care home and three had recovered….
…..Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland’s Drivetime with John Beattie, Sir David revealed that HC One, which operates 56 homes in Scotland, has had Covid-19 cases at two thirds of its sites in recent weeks….
…..Sir David, a former chief executive of the Care Quality Commission in England, accepted that an inspection report in January had highlighted some problems with cleanliness and staffing at Home Farm…..
….But he insisted an action plan had been drawn up to address these problems and told John Beattie he was not looking “to hide anything here. This is a matter of public of interest”.
However, he conceded it had been difficult to recruit permanent staff on Skye.
“In this particular home we have competition from tourism and other industries.
“We have increased salaries… to try to recruit but we’ve had a large dependency on agency staff because of the difficulty in recruiting staff,” he said.
Testing delay
The firm has had to bring in staff from outside the island to staff the Home Farm site, from other homes that have been virus-free, as an increasing number of workers self-isolated.
He said guidance had been followed, but a major problem was that staff could have been asymptomatic and spreading the virus.
“The delay in rolling out comprehensive testing of both staff and residents will no doubt have contributed to the virus being present in care homes,” he said.”
It seems to me that there is a level of superficiality in the reporting here. For example,what are the wages on offer from the company to encourage people on Skye to work in the care home.?
Why would Beattie not question the decision to bring in staff from other care homes that were, apparently, virus free if there was a real concern about asymptomatic transmission?
(I am not convinced there is asymptomatic transmission on any great scale. The Chinese experience set out in the WHO report is that there was a low level of asymptomatic transmission and virtually all such cases went on to display symptoms. If you want to transfer staff, you need to isolate them first.) No questions from Beattie on isolating transferred staff first.
There is an implicit acceptance in this report that it is not the responsibility of the owner to pay for such “comprehensive testing” or that the owner recognises that there is comprehensive testing of all staff and residents in care homes with covid19 infection in Scotland. Mass testing of staff in the home was done on 29 and 30 April. Why is this unstated? Where is the alleged delay?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-52546673
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