‘We’re doing everything we can to get protective gear for NHS’, minister says

The government is doing ‘absolutely everything we can’ to provide NHS workers with protective gear against coronavirus, a minister has said.

Eduction minister Gavin Williamson told today’s press briefing: ‘We recognise there are key areas of pressure within PPE.

‘The pressure points have shifted over the last few weeks in terms of what types of PPE are required.

‘I want to assure you we are doing absolutely everything we can to bring PPE in. We recognise it’s a big challenge.

‘We’ve got to support the people supporting our nation and we will continue to focus on doing that.’

Jenny Harries added: ‘I think we have had, if I might say from my own professional perspective, we could perhaps have a more adult, and more detailed conversation about PPE supplies.

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‘For example, quite rightly, the conversation at the moment is very much focused on gown supplies. Earlier, in earlier weeks, I’m very aware of consideration of eye-wear for example, in goggles and masks.

‘And I think it is important to remember that, although there may be elements of distribution problems across the UK at different times and in different places, this is a huge pull on services which we have never seen before.

‘And we have managed actually despite signalling many potential shortfalls to continue to supply going forward, and even as I stand here, I know with the gown position, for example, that even though when orders go in overseas, supplies may be very different what is received to what we think we’re going to get.

‘We have worked right across the UK to try and manage those supplies based predominantly and always on a risk mitigation method, so this is about whichever patient or whichever healthcare worker at highest risk across the UK requires those PPE.

‘And I think we perhaps need to, rather than lumping all of the PPE together, which is not a homogeneous mix at all, we just need to think carefully through what has been achieved and the challenges which are acknowledged ahead.’

Yesterday morning, a plane carrying around 10 million face masks and other vital pieces of personal protective equipment (PPE) landed in Scotland after taking off from China.

The charter flight touched down at Glasgow Prestwick Airport.

However, an RAF flight due to be carrying PPE from Turkey today was delayed for unknown reasons. The shipment was set to include 400,000 surgical gowns.

A British Medical Association (BMA) survey of more than 6,000 doctors across the country said a significant amount of them remain without the protection they need to guard against Covid-19.

It echoed another survey of 14,000 medical staff by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) which found half of nurses have felt pressure to work without appropriate protective equipment during the crisis.

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