Patient movements ‘made mockery’ of Covid rules

Patients being able to meet friends and family outside hospital without protective measures made a “mockery of infection control”, an inquiry has heard. Covid Bereaved lead member Jane Morrison told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry in Edinburgh that while her wife Jacky was ill with the virus in hospital, she saw other patients leaving the building to meet with friends and families in groups with no personal protective equipment or social distancing. Jacky died in Ninewells Hospital in Dundee with Covid-19 in October 2020 aged 49, having contracted the virus while a patient there.

Responding to questions from Jamie Dawson KC, lead counsel to the current module of the inquiry, Ms Morrison said the movement of patients made a “mockery of infection control” and was like “pulling down a portcullis to stop a swarm of bees”.

She said: “To us, one of the biggest gaps when Covid started, certainly in the hospital that Jacky was in, they set up a system – you could only have one visitor for the duration of that patient’s stay. But every time I went to visit Jacky, outside of the hospital, you had patientswhohadcomeoutside and they were meeting friends and families in the car parks with no masks, no social distancing and in groups of up to half a dozen.

“Then I saw it with my own eyes and I finished and walked back into the hospital and they wouldn’t even use the hand gel.

“So you know it makes a mockery of much of the infection control because it’s like pulling down a portcullis to stop a swarm of bees.”

The inquiry, before Baroness Heather Hallett, continues.