SCOTTISH Labour could not back up a claim from Anas Sarwar that he spoke out against discharging Covid patients into care homes at the start of the pandemic.

The party leader told Channel 4 News that he “absolutely” spoke out about the issue during March and April last year.

Of the 10,000 Covid-related deaths that have occurred in Scotland, about a third took place in care homes.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has acknowledged that it was a mistake to discharge Covid patients to care homes last year and has called for a four-nations inquiry into the policy to be held by the end of the year.

READ MORE: Link between hospital discharges and care home Covid outbreaks ‘not ruled out’

Nearly 5000 patients were sent to care homes between March and May 2020, many without a Covid test. Public Health Scotland has said it “cannot rule out a small effect” between hospital discharge and care home coronavirus outbreaks.

Speaking to Channel 4, Sarwar heavily criticised the Scottish Government’s Covid approach to care homes. He said it was “common sense” that patients should not have been sent to places where the most vulnerable people reside.

The reporter picked up on Sarwar’s claim that Scotland has the second-worst Covid care home death rate in Europe, pointing out that other statistics, such as those on excess deaths, show different results.

He asked Sarwar if the care home move was “common sense”, had he spoken out against it?

“Absolutely I was. I was absolutely saying that we should not be sending Covid-positive patients,” he responded.

But afterwards, journalist Ciaran Jenkins wrote online that Scottish Labour “were not able to point us to any statements from Anas Sarwar to that effect from March and April 2020”.

The party said on May 12 Sarwar spoke out, telling Parliament there “should be no-one in care homes unless they have tested negative”.

But that came weeks after the Government confirmed patients would be tested. On April 12 2020, Health Secretary Jeane Freeman had announced Covid-19 patients being sent to hospital should have two negative tests before being discharged.

“I now expect other new admissions to care homes to be tested and isolated for 14 days in addition to the clear social distancing measures the guidance sets out,” she said in a statement in Holyrood.

Other Labour figures, like health spokesperson Monica Lennon, had spoken out in April.

READ MORE: Three-quarters of Scots with family in care homes mentally distressed by Covid

This week Sturgeon responded to new Crown Office figures showing the number of deaths reported at each care home in Scotland.

At her Covid-19 briefing, the First Minister said: “We at all stages of this pandemic have taken the decisions we thought were best to keep people, including people in care homes, as safe as possible.

"But we have had a developing knowledge about this virus. We know things now about the dangers of asymptomatic transmission that we didn’t know then and if we could turn the clock back and have all of the knowledge then as we have now, undoubtedly there are things not just around care homes, but particularly around care homes and perhaps more widely, we would do differently.

"We didn’t have then the benefit of the hindsight we have today.”

She added that her government’s approach changed during the pandemic, leading to a lower number of care home deaths during the second wave. However, she acknowledged “that is no comfort to anybody who has lost a loved one”.