The lives of NHS staff and patients were put at risk in the pandemic because of a lack of adequate personal protective equipment (PPE), with almost £10bn of taxpayers’ money wasted in a scramble to buy more, the Covid inquiry has said.
The chair Baroness Hallett criticised the “vast” waste in procurement, put at £9.9bn – two-thirds of the £14.9bn the government spent on PPE.
The UK entered the pandemic with its stockpile of masks, gowns and gloves in a perilous state and was unprepared for the global race to secure supplies, she added.
She described the controversial VIP lane, which prioritised PPE offers from those with political connections, as a misguided policy that should not be repeated.
But she said there was “no evidence of cronyism or corruption” by ministers or other officials when awarding the final contracts.
When the cost of home testing kits and other equipment, such as ventilators, was included, the total amount spent by the government between January 2020 and June 2022 exceeded £42bn, the inquiry found.
The UK’s emergency stockpile of PPE, meant to last at least 15 weeks before being replenished, was running out by the end of March 2020 as demand from hospitals soared.
Only a third of the masks in England’s pandemic stockpile were usable, the inquiry found, while Scotland had no supplies of high-grade respiratory masks used in hospitals.
At the time, care homes, GP surgeries and pharmacies were all expected to source their own PPE, something the report described as a “major failure in planning”.
Source:
www.bbc.co.uk
