American_Mary
Well-known member
I’m not mistaking anything it’s in the National Audit Office report that the NHS suffered a physical shortage due to ‘stockpile deficiencies in visors, swabs, body bags and gowns’ the BMJ also reported incidents of multi use of PPE which compromised safety due to these shortages.I think you are mistaking the national shortage to other areas of need rather than the NHS.
PPE was not available to care homes etc. because it was thought at the time that the NHS was the primary place of need.
This was obviously wrong in hindsight and the enquiry will obviously highlight this.
Please remember that this was a once in a life time situation and the chaos and panic of the Government at the time was mirrored by every other Government in the developed World.
In an ideal world we would have had x number of tons of PPE just sitting in a warehouse waiting to dole out to everyone who asked for it.
As an aside , although not an excuse , Care Homes are in the main private profit making businesses and if the Government are taken to task for not having a sufficient stock of PPE then perhaps they should take their share of the blame.
Some countries had sufficient stockpile others didn’t, some countries could account for every single item of PPE we couldn’t, we created our stockpile in 2009 in readiness for such an event we failed to add to it sufficiently and we had a National shortage of PPE at NHS level according to multiple sources including the Government’s own Audit Office.