THE National Care Association has claimed care homes were effectively left to their own devices by the Government at the height of the pandemic.

NCA spokesperson Joyce Penfield spoke out in the wake of an employment tribunal in Leeds which ruled five care home staff were fairly sacked for refusing to be vaccinated.

Ms Penfield told GB News: “If you go back to the beginning of Covid, we did not quite know what was going to happen.

“We were all very worried regarding protecting the NHS so of course the Government did leave us to our own devices almost. All they wanted was to protect the NHS, so they did send people to care homes without testing.

“So many, many people were unfortunately left open to the Covid virus, and many residents and indeed the staff were lost due to that virus about 18 months ago.

“We were calling for more protection, and that we needed PPE. We also needed people to come into care homes who had been tested so that we wouldn’t be bringing that virus into the care homes from that.”

In an interview with Bev Turner, she said: “Of course, it was the government legislation that says that we did have to vaccinate all of our staff. So in many ways, we had no option.

“Many of our staff felt that this was really a very hard thing to put on care workers who were already stressed at that time.

She added: “Of course, we have a duty of care, but because of that mandatory vaccination programme that was put on us by the Government, we almost had no option.

“We could perhaps have managed by coercion to explain to people that this was the best way to protect our residents to protect yourselves and your families, but we weren’t given that option to try and persuade people. So unfortunately, this is why many people lost their jobs.”