leading health organizations including
the Faculty of intensive care medicine
have repeated their warning that a lack
of protective equipment or PPE is
putting lives at risk and they called
for a clear strategy to ensure a
sustained supply an RAF aircraft has
flown to Turkey to collect a shipment of
400,000 clinical gowns that delivery was
expected yesterday it's still not clear
when it'll happen public health England
has admitted that the lack of PPE is a
concern our health editor Hugh Pym has
more details one care homes response to
equipment shortages get it made by local
contacts these are the supplies that we
have up in head office as you can see
they're very limited we have ten liters
of our whole hand rope while supplies
are still coming in they're hard to get
and staff who look after residence with
Kovich symptoms fear they may run out we
are putting not just our residents at
risk but also our staff and that makes
us feel awful and it keeps us up at
night and which what we're trying our
best josiya Coley was a nurse for 30
years in recent weeks she worked on
kovat 19 wards and died with the virus
on Easter Monday she told her family she
thought her protective equipment was not
the best I feel like they should protect
those in the front lines because they're
kind of sending them over there naked I
feel like without the proper protection
then more things like this and more
families will lose a loved one the trust
where she worked
said they had implemented national
guidance on protective equipment for
hospitals specialist gowns and masks
used in intensive care in short supply
some though not this one say they're
down to only a day or so of stocks
usually staff put on new items every few
hours but the guidance has been changed
so they're allowed to wash and reuse the
gowns frontline staff they were
concerned about the situation you want
to treat patients and we never expected
that we were putting our own health at
risk by doing that
and not knowing whether you're going to
be able to protect yourself it's a worry
that we shouldn't have to have one trust
in lincolnshire made up of three major
hospitals has revealed how much
protective equipment known as PPE they
use in a single day thirty nine and a
half thousand surgical masks nearly
eleven and a half thousand gloves around
1,500 gowns and about 4,200 specialists
FFP three masks including other items
that total is 72,000 for just one day I
raised the concerns about shortages in
some areas of the Downing Street media
briefing are you ashamed as a government
that there are some NHS staff going into
work who say they're worried about their
safety because they fear their hospitals
might run out of PPE absolutely
everybody work incredibly hard on the
front line deserves to have the
equipment they need to be able to do
their job safely and we're working
around the clock to make sure that we
can deliver on that obviously a billion
pieces of PPE but delivered I think 12
million yesterday and as you heard from
me we're improving our sourcing
internationally and domestically to make
sure we can get the PPE we need but in
what is they're very challenging
international contacts the Chancellor
said there were delays with the planned
Turkish consignment of PPE for the
shipment of gowns from Myanmar had
arrived with the new temporary NHS
hospital in Glasgow ready to take
patients the Scottish government said it
was working at pace to improve the
supply of PPE and the opening ceremony
was held at Cardiff's new facility at
the Principality Stadium with room for
up to 2,000 kovat 19 patients in a rare
public statement the Duke of Edinburgh
said he wanted to thank all key workers
and recognize the vital and urgent
medical and scientific work taking place
tributes have been paid to dr. Manjeet
Singh Reyat an emergency medicine
consultant at Royal Derby Hospital who
died after contracting the virus there
was more uplifting news at East Sussex
trust a staff gave one of their own a
round of applause today a nurse who was
leaving critical care Cupid BBC news
[Applause]
well the government's declared deadline
to be testing a hundred thousand people
a day for coronavirus is less than two
weeks away and some experts say it's
almost impossible to see that target
being met now and it's confirmed that
yesterday just nineteen thousand three
hundred and sixteen tests were carried
out across the UK now in Cardiff the
Welsh government has now abandoned its
target on testing after failing to come
close to the five thousand a day figure
set for mid-april the First Minister of
Wales Mark Drake Foote says there were
problems with sourcing chemicals from
abroad but there are also hundreds of
unused testing spaces every day the
Welsh government has called on military
planners to review its testing system
but a new target will not apparently be
set so let's talk now to our health
editor Hugh Pym who joins us once again
when when they say today in Downing
Street you that the numbers of new cases
are flat and stable are they in effect
saying that we've passed the peak I
think you they are saying we are at the
peak and the likely Direction know for
all the indicators is downwards that new
cases new infections has been flat for a
little wild a little while now now the
daily reported death toll tragic though
it is is the lowest in two weeks below
500 now let's remember that is largely
Hospital deaths and of course it follows
a weekend when the may have been fewer
registrations so we need to watch the
next few days and then there are the
data on patient numbers in hospitals
with kovat 19 and that chart was shown
at the media briefing today so let's
take a look at that and that's very
important you see London there that line
that's been falling for seven days known
of course London led the rest of the UK
in terms of the number of cases the
Northwest having gone up a bit has now
flattened Scotland Wales is down a bit
Scotland flat the East of England is the
only one we've picked a few here from
around the UK the only one that's
pointing upwards so I think all this is
seen as very positive they need a bit
more time to assess the data but they
certainly don't want to give the
impression to the public that the
lockdown is about to be lifted there
worried largely about the wrong signals
being put out and also worried about the
possibility of a second spike sometime
later in the year okay Hugh panco thanks
very much
Hugh pinned our health editor