Boris Johnson criticised over his comments on care homes amid COVID-19 crisis

Amid the coronavirus contagion, while the UK has started gradual reopening, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson faced severe backlash on July 7 over his comments on the country’s care homes. As per Johns Hopkins University tally, UK has recorded one of the highest death tolls of coronavirus infection in the world with 44,321 casualties and over 287,200 COVID-19 cases. Meanwhile, Johnson reportedly said that the government ‘discovered too many care homes didn’t really follow the procedures in the way they could have’. This unleashed a fresh wave of criticism by the opposition as well as heads of care homes in the UK.

According to international media reports, chief executive of charity Community Integrated Care Mark Adams said that he was ‘unbelievably disappointed’ by British Prime Minister’s comments. Moreover according to him, placing the blame on care homes was clumsy and cowardly and reportedly even represented dystopian rewriting of history. In an exclusive interview with BBC radio, Adams said that UK PM’s lashing out on such facilities while still not holding himself accountable for delaying country’s response to COVID-19 crisis is ‘unacceptable’.

"To get a throwaway comment almost glibly blaming the social care system, and not holding your hands up for starting too late, doing the wrong things, making mistake after mistake, it is just frankly unacceptable," said Mark Adams.

He added, "If this is genuinely his view, I think we're almost entering a Kafkaesque alternative reality."

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UK PM is 'asleep at the wheel'

Adams criticism came just nearly a week after the UK Labour Party’s leader Keir Starmer took a dig on Boris Johnson. In a televised interview with an international media outlet, UK’s opposition party leader said that Johnson “has been asleep on the wheel” during the COVID-19 crisis. He not only called the measures taken by the Conservative government “slow” but also called the communication “terrible”.

Moreover, Labour Party leader said that UK government’s response to coronavirus contagion began to “break down” when Johnson’s adviser Dominic Cummings started defending his actions defying the protocol and travelled hundreds of kilometres citing the safety of his son. Starmer also said that British PM’s administration did not do the groundwork required for ‘test, trace and isolate’.

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Image: AP