Recommendation 179

Professor Chris Whitty told the Health and Social Care Committee in July 2020 that the lack of testing capacity available at the beginning of the pandemic meant that the Government had to focus resources very closely on the hospital sector, and in particular intensive care units.265 Within hospitals, the prioritisation of patients admitted to intensive care meant less testing capacity was available for other patients in hospital, inhibiting the safe provision of non-covid NHS care and increasing the risk of nosocomial infections. The British Infection Association, the professional association for infection specialists, stated that “decisions about who to test and when early in the pandemic almost certainly led to […] nosocomial and [healthcare worker] infections in secondary care.”266 In February, a paper submitted to SAGE by Public Health England and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimated that during the first wave of covid-19 alone, 36,152 people in England contracted covid-19 while in hospital, representing 40.5% of all hospital cases.267