Care homes were “hung out to dry” during the Covid pandemic, a sector leader has told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry.

During hearings examining decision making and political governance in Scotland, Dr Donald Mackaskill, chief executive of Scottish Care, said lives were lost because of uncertainty caused by government guidance.

Mackaskill said: “It became a massive challenge for most operators and providers to adhere to guidance which was not fit for purpose.”

The Scottish Care leader said there was a “lack of trust” with the NHS during hospital discharges, adding he had “lost count” of the number of instances of members reporting hospitals clearing beds for the weekend in what became known as the “Friday night discharge.”

Mackaskill said: “People were discharged late on a Friday afternoon, often without information being communicated to family, typically and not infrequently without appropriate medication or at least that were able to be taken to a pharmacy out of emergency hours, and in many instances with a lack of or insufficient case notes to enable that transfer to happen positively, both to the community and into care homes.”

Professor Paul Cairney told the hearing that then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Deputy Minister  John Swinney had repeated mistakes as they dealt with new waves of infection.

Cairney said: “They clearly were not sure what would happen, how much people would adhere to the guidelines and suchlike. But they state time and time again in the documents, ‘we learned a lot from what happened during that lockdown and we have learned a lot about what this virus is’, and yet they appear to have produced the same delays in response for the second lockdown as the first.”

The inquiry continues this week.