You can carry that to every person working in every job in the country. But if the government passed legislation to say these care homes should keep this stuff and now they still had insufficient people would still die and the governmet would still be getting the blame for not having sufficient to cover the care homes failure. If a construction company failed to give a worker the correct PPE and he died would you blame the government for not having given it to him instead?
The real point about PPE in care homes is that it is to protect the people who work there not the inmates. (Sorry can't think of the appropriate word) so they woud still be dying anyway.