Couple died after Covid ‘taken into house by carers’, daughter tells inquiry

A woman whose parents died of Covid a month apart during the pandemic has told a public inquiry she believes the infection was taken into their house by carers.

Hazel Gray, from Northern Ireland, told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry that the virus was spread by “people doing their jobs”, caring for the vulnerable.

She said the trauma of not being able to be with her parents when they died will stay with her forever, adding that her mother and father “disappeared”.

Module seven of the inquiry is examining test, trace and isolate policies adopted during the pandemic.

Ms Gray’s parents, George and Violet Little, from Co Fermanagh, died in December 2020 and January 2021. They were 80 and 78 years old.

Ms Gray, a member of the Northern Ireland Covid Bereaved Families for Justice group, told the inquiry on Tuesday that people in the region had presumed that “things were being done” to prevent the spread of Covid.

She said: “Only when it came to my own doorstep did I realise that what I presumed was not happening at all.

“People who were working with vulnerable people – carers coming to my mother – were actually not being tested, nor were other healthcare workers.

“To me, it seemed to be a total lack of common sense; this was nine months into the pandemic.

“These people were actually spreading a virus and nothing was being done to counteract that.”

The inquiry heard that Ms Gray’s parents lived in a rural area and depended on carers who went to their house four times a day to move Mrs Little, who used a wheelchair.

Counsel to the inquiry Sophie Cartwright asked Ms Gray if she was confident Covid was taken into her parents’ house by the carers.

Ms Gray said when her father first tested positive for the virus, she took a test herself.

She said: “I immediately went and had a test and I was negative, so I knew that it wasn’t me that had passed the virus to them.

“My mum, we got her a postal test. Hers came back positive as well and then mine was positive.

“I am fairly confident I didn’t bring the virus to them and nobody else would have been in the house other than the carers.”

She said she spoke to the carers’ manager and asked when they had been tested.

She told the inquiry: “His answer was, it wasn’t the hospital trust policy to actually test carers who were going into the homes of vulnerable people.

“That was the shocking realisation that this was what was happening in the country – carers were going into the homes of people who were not tested.”

Ms Gray said she sent a text message to then-health minister Robin Swann about the situation and he responded that he would look into it.

She told the inquiry that her father died first, in December 2020, while her mother was in hospital.

She said: “I can’t begin to imagine what it must have been like for my mother, knowing that my father had passed away and nobody was there with her to comfort her.

“They said on the day of my father’s funeral she watched the clock.”

Ms Gray also raised concerns about paramedics who attended to both her father and mother while wearing “basic PPE”.

She said: “When I asked them did they get tested, they said no, who would do their jobs if they were going to be tested and come back positive?

“It was this attitude – ‘If we don’t get tested we won’t know whether we are positive or not’.

“This virus was being spread by people who were doing their jobs and caring for people who were already sick.

“The process to me just did not make sense.”

Ms Gray said she was not able to be with either of her parents when they died because of Covid restrictions.

She said: “If it had been an animal, a vet would encourage the animal’s owner to be there with them to the very end.

“I, twice, didn’t get that opportunity and so many people have had similar experiences.

“The trauma of not being there for your parents’ last breaths will stay with me forever.

“My parents disappeared, I never saw them again.”

Ms Gray added: “My parents’ lives were cut short. Their experience was horrendous – for me, for them, for the whole country.

“All those who were lost, their lives must not have meant nothing, they cannot have died in vain.

“We must have changes in this country that people never have to experience this kind of trauma over a virus again.”