Care leaders have urged the government to learn the lessons from the pandemic following the latest evidence given to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry.

The call followed last week’s hearings which revealed that then deputy chief medical officer and current UKHSA chief executive Professor Dame Jenny Harries said discharging Covid positive patients into care homes during the pandemic was “clinically appropriate” to protect the NHS from collapse.

In an email sent in March 2020, Professor Harries said: “The numbers of people with disease will rise sharply within a fairly short timeframe and I suspect make this fairly normal practice, and more acceptable, but I do recognise that families and care homes will not welcome this in the initial phase.”

Giving his evidence former health and social care secretary Matt Hancock said discharging Covid patients into care homes was “the only choice” between “bad options”.

“I fear that if we had left those patients in hospital, those who were medically fit to discharge, there is a high likelihood that more would have caught Covid and the problem could have been bigger,” Hancock said.

Over 45,000 care home residents died with Covid during the pandemic.

Helen Wildbore, director of Care Rights UK, said: “The evidence exposes what families have known all along – there was no protective ring around care homes. Quite the opposite, decisions by government put people living in care at greater risk – not least discharge without testing. Having this confirmed, almost four years later, will be incredibly painful and frustrating for residents and their families. Their voices were lost four years ago, now they must be heard.”

Mike Padgham, chair of the Independent Care Group (ICG), said the evidence exposed the need to bring social care and NHS under one roof.

“Had the government had oversight on social care as it has the NHS, we may have had a more effective, co-ordinated approach,” Padgham said.

The ICG chair called for the creation of a National Care Service to put an end to the current “fractured and confusing” management of social care.