Once more BBC Scotland report on care home deaths in privately owned care homes but fail to mention the owners.

NHS Grampian get a mention just as NHS Fife featured heavily in other reports in the last few days.

As in the Skye care home outbreak, the health boards and the local councils have stepped in, after the outbreak has spiralled out of control, to support profit-making enterprises, by deploying their employees, in places where minimal staffing, full occupancy, inadequate training and the dangerous use of agency staff during a pandemic has resulted in unacceptable levels of risk to vulnerable residents.

For months, media reports based on opposition party and GMB attempts, have tried somehow to blame the Scottish Government for the failures of private owners and have tried repeatedly to causally link outbreaks to hospital discharges into care homes. Five research reports have now shown that this link does not exist but that care home size and the use of agency staff are causally linked.

The prosecutors will not be taken in by rumour, will read the research and will burrow down to the actual roots of the outbreaks – the malpractice of the owners.