Covid minister: 'The choice was harm or more harm'

Scotland's Covid pandemic health secretary has said she understands the anger and pain of bereaved relatives - but stands by the decisions she made.

Reflecting on the fifth anniversary of the 2020 lockdown, Jeane Freeman said there were no "binary" right or wrong options - and she had to choose between harm and more harm.

Asked about a controversial early decision to discharge elderly hospital patients to care homes without testing, she told BBC Scotland's The Sunday Show, there was not enough testing capacity at the time.

But Freeman accepted that in hindsight there was room for debate on whether the decision to close schools was the correct one.

As health secretary in Nicola Sturgeon's government, Freeman found herself a key decision maker when the outbreak spread to the UK in March 2020.

Over the next three years more than 16,000 people would die in Scotland with Covid.

Freeman said she was well aware of the potential impact that lockdown would have on individuals, businesses and health services, and she was particularly worried about the reduction in cancer screening.

She said: "There was never a binary decision in any of this.

"There was a harmful thing to do and a more harmful to do; there was a risky thing and a more risky thing."

Freeman was asked directly about the discharge of hospital patients to care homes during the first few weeks of lockdown without a requirement for a negative test.

The worst mortality rates were later seen within care homes as the virus spread among vulnerable residents, and the guidance on testing before hospital discharge did not change until 22 April.

Freeman denied that in hindsight that looked like a "crazy" decision.

"If I could have tested every single resident going into a care home, I would have tested them - but we did not have the capacity to run those tests and process them," she said.

She added that alternative measures were in place at the time such as isolation in order to prevent transmission of the Covid-19 virus.

Freeman said she "absolutely" understood the anger of those who lost loved ones.

She continued: "As I could improve the circumstances, I absolutely did, but there is no getting away from the fact that people died, people were harmed and there was a long term impact."

But she that that if she and others had not taken those decisions, things "would have been worse".

On the issue of school closures, which former national clinical adviser Jason Leitch has since described as something he might reconsider with hindsight, Freeman was more equivocal.

"I can't say for sure that was the wrong decision but I think it is a decision - and I think many of them are actually - worth a reconsideration," she said.

"There's certainly things to be done to prepare us to be in a better starting place than we were for the next pandemic - which will come along."

Freeman also spoke of her own personal struggles as she helped make life and death policy decisions. "I've described it as two years of running anxiety," she said.

Asked if she had been through a process herself to help rationalise what happened, she replied "partly" but that was difficult because she was still involved in public inquiries into the Covid response.

"Every time I have to write a witness statement or give evidence, I'm back there living it again."

She added: "When we get through the inquiry, I recognise that I will need to do that."

The full interview with Jeane Freeman, including material not broadcast by the Sunday Show, is available in a special episode of the Scotcast podcast.