People who died with Covid treated ‘like toxic waste’, families tell UK inquiry

People who died with Covid were treated like “toxic waste”, bereaved families have told the UK Covid-19 public inquiry as they expressed their determination to channel their “grief, frustration and heartbreak” into making the UK better prepared for future pandemics.

Representatives of campaign groups from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland told the inquiry how widespread infection in hospitals and care homes, failures to use PPE properly, the use of do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation orders and isolation of the vulnerable all showed how the nations were not properly prepared.

They repeatedly told the final day of witness evidence in the inquiry’s investigation into the UK’s preparedness about the huge impact of undignified deaths and thwarted grieving.

Brenda Doherty, co-lead of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Northern Ireland, described how she was unable to visit her mother after she acquired Covid in hospital. Ruth Burke, 82, was awaiting discharge, but there was a delay and she tested positive for Covid. Later came a call explaining “this was a battle she was not going to win” and within 12 hours she died.

When it came to her burial, Doherty said: “I like to think she was in the nightdress I brought here, but the reality is she was double-bagged like toxic waste.”

Doherty said: “I am here to remind everybody of the human cost that we paid as bereaved people. My mummy was not cannon fodder. My mummy was a wonderful wee woman who had the spirit of Goliath and I know she is standing with me today.”

Anna-Louise Marsh-Rees, representing Covid Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru, who lost her father, Ian, after he was hospitalised for a gall bladder infection in October 2020, also told the inquiry: “Once somebody with Covid dies, they are almost treated like toxic waste. They are zipped away.”

“Nobody told us that you can’t wash them, you can’t dress them,” she said. “You couldn’t sing at a funeral. We’re Welsh. That’s something we have to do. [What we want is] to ensure all those areas are considered in preparedness … Most of our loved ones did not have a good death.”

Their evidence followed lobbying by Covid bereaved groups to have more of their testimonies heard in the inquiry room and comes after six weeks of testimony from cabinet ministers and senior health and science officials. Closing statements in this first module will conclude on Wednesday and the inquiry will restart in the autumn with an investigation into central government decision-making during the pandemic.

Matt Fowler, co-founder of the UK Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group, used his evidence to attack Matt Hancock’s claim in May 2020 that “we absolutely did throw a protective ring around social care”, despite widespread infection that contributed to 27,000 “excess deaths” in care homes in the first wave of the pandemic.

“It was deeply traumatic to be told that apparently there was a protective ring thrown around most vulnerable when … that wasn’t actually the truth,” he said.

Fowler said some care homes “couldn’t react because they genuinely didn’t know what to do”.

Jane Morrison, co-founder of Scottish Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, lost her wife, Jackie Morrison Hart, in October 2020 after catching Covid in hospital. She said her group’s members included “traumatised health care workers”, those struggling with long Covid and the financial consequences of the pandemic, “and quite a lot of people with post-traumatic stress”.

Meanwhile the inquiry chair, Lady Hallett, attacked the cruelty of people who stalked, abused and threatened bereaved families online and in person.

Fowler, 35, who lost his 56-year-old father, Ian, to Covid in April 2020, told the inquiry: “Anti-mask protesters, vaccine sceptics, those people have often targeted me and members of the group that I represent. Sometimes they’ve gone out of their way to seek people out. We’ve had people that have made a media appearance … who have then been stalked via social media and abused, in some cases threatened.”

Hallett said: “I cannot understand the mentality of people who abused and threatened bereaved people like you, it is just plain cruel. It piles trauma on trauma. I’m sorry, there are people like that in the world.”

Doherty also said she had been sent swastikas in messages when she spoke out about the need for people to use PPE. When she posted that she was giving evidence to the inquiry, another person said online that “Covid was as real as Michael Jackson walking around.”

The inquiry continues.