The UK government failed to adequately follow World Health Organisation (WHO) advice on minimising Covid-19 outbreaks in nursing homes during the pandemic, the UK Covid-19 Inquiry has been told.

Giving evidence this week, Anthony Costello, Professor of global health and inclusion health research, said the UK “didn’t do much” with regards to the WHO strategic preparedness and response plan issued on 3 February 2020 that prioritised minimising care home outbreaks.

The health expert said “upwards of 150k deaths” could have been prevented if the UK had followed the policies put in place by nations such as Japan and South Korea.

There were 43,256 deaths involving Covid-19 in care homes in England between March 2020 and January 2022.

The second module of the Inquiry on core UK decision making and political governance focuses on the period until the first full lockdown in March 2020.

When asked why care homes had not been included in pandemic preparedness modelling, Mark Woolhouse, Professor of infectious disease epidemiology, said it was because the models focused on preventing the spread of influenza, which is driven by infection in schools.

Professor Woolhouse added there was no evidence that contact tracing was in place in any meaningful way in vulnerable locations such as care homes in March 2020.

Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Andrew Hayward, highlighted that care homes with greater use of agency staff were more prone to risk of outbreaks due to their carrying infection from one home to another.

The professor said homes unable to pay higher rates of sick pay had greater rates of infection because it was harder for these staff to stay off work if they were ill.

The module 2 public hearings continue until 14 December.