Personal protection
In any “future inquiry” into why Britain was not better prepared for the coronavirus, the issue of personal protective equipment (PPE) will loom large, said The Times. Before the virus hit, shortages of PPE for NHS staff – gowns, gloves, masks, goggles and visors – during a pandemic had been highlighted as a potential major issue in government planning sessions. Yet clearly these were not heeded: shortages across the country have been so severe, medics have resorted to making gowns out of bin bags. This week, supplies were “critically low”, according to NHS Providers, which represents hospitals; the Royal College of Nursing advised members to stop work, rather than risk their health. That would be a last resort, but the advice is right: “the country can never defeat the virus if NHS staff themselves become super-spreaders”.
The Government claims that it is making “Herculean efforts” to tackle the shortages, said BBC News. Some 761 million pieces of
PPE have been delivered to the NHS in the past few weeks. Firms such as Burberry, Rolls-Royce and Barbour have been recruited to start producing it. Yet the logistical issues in supplying the NHS’s 1.2 million staff are vast, said Chris Hopson of NHS Providers in The Guardian. Gaps certainly remain: there are shortages of visors and gowns. China is the only immediate “high-volume source” of clinical gowns, and there is now fierce global competition for its supplies.
A “serious lack” of PPE is also a major concern in Britain’s 11,000 care homes, where “a silent crisis is unfolding”, said Sarah Knapton in The Daily Telegraph. Like cruise ships, these homes are “a hothouse for disease” owing to their dense, elderly populations and high staff turnover: this week, officials admitted that Covid-19 outbreaks had occured in at least one in seven of them. It has been clear for weeks that a big part of the problem is the shortage of PPE, yet care home orders have been cancelled in favour of the NHS. The ministerial focus on the NHS has left care homes “abandoned”.