Recommendation 15

Many departments are having to source products and services quickly in new or emerging markets, often with complex and varied supply chains. The health and social care supply chain has had to work with pharmaceutical companies, private sector health equipment companies and manufacturing and logistics companies, and must compete with many other purchasing entities from across the world.34 The Cabinet Office told us that there was around a fourfold increase in demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) across 58,000 sites in the health and social care sector, and that its central buying operation alone bought 1.7 billion pieces of PPE. It claimed that while things were “tight” at various stages of the peak of the crisis, it did not run out of any items centrally. However, it acknowledged that there were daily examples of local shortages, particularly of aprons, and that it believed this was “inevitably” the case.35