Doctor to take the stand at Covid-19 Inquiry to expose UK officials

Next week public hearings commence for Module 3 of the Covid-19 Inquiry, with a focus on the experience of healthcare during the pandemic. An eminent medic will take the stand on 12 September at the Covid-19 Inquiry to give testimony of how UK healthcare officials have systematically denied overwhelming scientific evidence that Covid-19 is airborne.

Dr Barry Jones chairs the COVID-19 Airborne Transmission Alliance (CATA) which is a Core Participant in the UK Covid-19 Inquiry. The Alliance includes professional associations representing 65,000 healthcare workers as well as individual experts. Since 2020, CATA’s membership have been seeking to persuade UK Health Officials to align national guidance to the scientific facts about how the disease is transmitted and how healthcare workers need to be protected from infection.

He will also challenge official assertions that healthcare workers did not need respiratory protective equipment when working close to infected patients or in poorly ventilated areas, except in an arbitrary set of situations. This position reveals the startling fact that since the outset of the pandemic, and despite all the evidence, health officials in the UK stubbornly continue to deny airborne transmission of the disease.

Proportionately, the UK reported a higher death rate of healthcare workers in the initial phase of the pandemic than almost anywhere in the world. In line with CATA’s evidence for Module 1, the Covid-19 Inquiry has already determined that the UK “prepared for the wrong pandemic” – one that is largely transmitted by droplets and touch.

As a result billions of pounds were wasted on inappropriate PPE. This ineffective PPE resulted in thousands of healthcare workers becoming infected in the workplace and transmitting Covid-19 to patients and co-workers. Not only were healthcare workers refused access to Respiratory Protective Equipment (RPE), but many were instructed to remove their own RPE, including those working in close quarters with infected patients and some staff were disciplined for asking for suitable RPE.

“The way in which healthcare workers were abandoned to their fates and their professional knowledge was disregarded has left a scar on the UK’s healthcare system,” says Kamini Gadhok, former CEO of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists and Vice Chair of CATA. “The mental health crisis in the NHS and staff shortages all have their roots in the disregard for life and expertise that professionals experienced through the pandemic.”

CATA’s ongoing concern has been that Health and Safety regulations and scientific principles were set aside through the pandemic in favour of Infection Protection and Control (IPC) guidance which did not even take account of advice from the Government’s own scientific experts.

Dr Barry Jones, Chair of CATA, is clear that “those responsible for the IPC guidance failed our healthcare workers, failed our patients and failed our communities.”

Read full story

Source: British Occupational Hygiene Society, 5 September 2024

Further reading on the hub:

• Respiratory protective equipment: An unequal solution for healthcare workers?
• Healthcare workers with Long Covid: Group litigation
• The pandemic – questions around Government governance