Piers Morgan hammers Care Minister Helen Whately for failing to know how many health workers have died due to coronavirus as two face-off for Round Two after her last car crash interview
- Care Minister Helen Whately was grilled by Piers Morgan on GMB this morning
- Claimed the government is changing the way it collects its coronavirus data
- Said current care home data includes some people who have died in hospital
- Learn more about how to help people impacted by COVID
Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan today slammed Care Minister Helen Whately for failing to know how many health workers have died due to the coronavirus pandemic in the UK.
Ms Whately appeared on the show last week and was criticised for laughing as Piers confronted her over the number of people that were reported to have died in care homes.
The interview this morning continued to heat up as Piers grilled the minister on the figures that are currently being published by the government.
Speaking on Good Morning Britain from her home in Kent, Ms Whately said the government is currently changing the way it collects data, before admitting that ‘more people than usual’ are dying in care homes.
Speaking from her home in Kent this morning Helen Whately appeared on Good Morning Britain
‘The situation with data we have is that it includes some people who have died in hospitals and it would be misleading.
‘We are changing the way we collect the data so we are able to publish specific figures’.
Piers turned the conversation to the amount of people who have died.
She said the capacity and number of people taking the tests matters and highlighted there had been over 17,000 deaths in hospital.
‘The ONS say 1,043 have died in care homes, I think there are probably more people than that who have died in care homes and we hope to publish more figures next week’, she said.
Piers pushed on and asked how many people she believed had actually died in care homes.
‘We have started changing the way we collect the data so next week we can publish a specific figure.’
Piers referred to a piece in today Financial Times that states the deaths are closer to nearly 41,000.
Ms Whately added: ‘That is not a figure I recognise and that it probably one of the issues in using data that isn’t accurate and hasn’t been validated’.
She added again that she didn’t recognise the figure and Piers responded that it was ‘hard to recognise a figure when you don’t know the amount of people who have died’.
Ms Whately reiterated that the government will publish the figures next week. Piers said he found it ‘insulting’ that the care minister did not know the number of people dying in care homes.
He said people that die in hospitals are getting more respect than people who die in care homes. He said she was not taking their deaths seriously enough.
‘That’s an incredibly unreasonable accusation, I take every death seriously, I would wish that nobody would die but the fact is is that this is a horrid virus and we know that those who are in care homes are the most vulnerable because of their age and because they have underlying health conditions.
‘We know people are dying in care homes’, she added.