A possibly illegal gathering of the ManxCare Executive Management Team
A possibly illegal gathering of the ManxCare Executive Management Team Credit: Teresa Cope

Earlier today, ManxCare published a photograph of their first “Executive Management Team Meeting this afternoon” online at Twitter.

This image showed at least eight senior health department “experts” appearing to possibly gather in possible contravention of the Public Health Protection (Coronavirus) Regulations.

After widespread criticism on Twitter in the Isle of Man, and thousands of people seeing various versions of the photo, it appears that there has been a ham-fisted attempt to delete the image and offending tweet. Unlike letters sent to the Minister for Health and Social Care, however, it is difficult to destroy all electronic copies of a document which has been published and distributed across the world.

Initially, Isle of Man Police might have confined any possible investigation into whether this indoor gathering was in breach of the law. Now, the Isle of Man Police will need to consider whether there was a further attempt to destroy evidence to hinder such an investigation.

At this stage, it is unclear if the Chief Minister and/or the Chief Minister will try to pre-empt an independent investigation here.

The Tweet at approximately 6pm on 6 April 2021
The same URL at 9:45pm on 6 April 2021