TOLL RISES AS NHS STAFFING
of the disease and prevent the NHS being overwhelmed with new cases.
Meanwhile in another unprecedented move, NHS England announced that it had struck a deal with the country’s independent hospitals to provide thousands more staff and nurses to the public healthcare system.
Under the agreement, the independent sector will reallocate practically its entire national hospital capacity en bloc to the NHS.
It will be reimbursed “at cost” – meaning that it will not make any profit for doing so.
NHS England chief executive Sir Simon Stevens said they were taking “immediate and exceptional action” to gear up to deal with an unprecedented global health threat.
“The NHS is doing everything in its power to expand treatment capacity, and is working with partners right across the country to do so,” he said.
It will mean 20,000 qualified staff temporarily joining the
NHS, providing additional 8,000 hospital beds and nearly 1,200 more ventilators.
David Hare, the chief executive of the Independent Healthcare Providers Network, said they stood ready to support the NHS for “as long as needed”.
“We have worked hand-inhand with the NHS for decades and will do whatever it takes to support the NHS in responding to this pandemic,” he said.
The move came amid mounting pressure on ministers to give front-line NHS staff the protective equipment they need as they tackle the coronavirus crisis
Former Tory health secretary Jeremy Hunt joined calls for the Government to “sort this out”, adding: “We are asking people to put their own lives at risk on the NHS front line.
“It is absolutely heart-breaking when NHS front-line professionals don’t have the equipment that they need.
“I think the Government has done a lot in the last week. I think they have unblocked the supply chains, but there is this question about whether it is the right equipment.”
He spoke after Lisa Anderson, a consultant cardiologist at St George’s Hospital in London, said the Government had changed the rules so they were no longer compliant with World Health Organization recommendations, which require medics to wear a full gown and visor.
She said that since Monday, staff in the NHS only had to wear a simple face mask, short gloves and a pinafore apron.
“This is not just about the risk .to ourselves and our families. We are travelling home on the Tube, on buses,” she told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
“There is a lack of protection for us which extends to a lack of plan of how to segregate patients clean and dirty, how to protect us and keep us away from the public. Doctors have no faith in what is going on.”
STOCKPILERS ‘SHOULD BE ASHAMED’ : PAGES 6&7