Covid Inquiry: intensive care units were a 'scene from hell' during pandemic

England’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Sir Chris Whitty, told the inquiry that England entered the pandemic with a lower number of intensive care beds than other developed countries, as Rebecca Barry reports

Sick patients “rained from the sky” and nurses were forced to use plastic sacks with cable ties as makeshift body bags during the height of the pandemic, the Covid inquiry has heard.

“Sometimes (staff) were so overwhelmed that they were putting patients in body bags, lifting them from the bed, putting them on the floor, and putting another patient in that bed straight away because there wasn't time,” Professor Kevin Fong, a former national clinical adviser in emergency preparedness, resilience and response at NHS England told the inquiry.

He broke down in tears as he described the “scene from hell” in the intensive care units during the Covid pandemic.

"They're no strangers to death; but the scale of death was truly, truly astounding,” Professor Kevin Fong said.

"Those nurses talk about being really traumatised by that, because they had recurring nightmares

about feeling like they were just throwing bodies away.

"We had nurses talking about patients raining from the sky.”

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The inquiry heard many hospitals ran out of body bags and other equipment and that hospitals were so short-staffed, some nurses were forced to wear adult nappies, as they had no time for toilet breaks.

Others bought their own protective equipment from hardware shops.

In some hospitals, the inquiry heard staff only wore underwear underneath their gowns because there were no scrubs available.

England’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Sir Chris Whitty, told the inquiry that England entered the pandemic with a lower number of intensive care beds than other developed countries.

“Now that's a choice, that's a political choice,” he said.

“It's a system configuration choice, but it is a choice.

“Therefore, you have less reserve when a major emergency happens, even if it's short of something of the scale of Covid."

About 227,000 people died in the UK from Covid between March 2020 and May 2023.

In his evidence to the inquiry, Professor Kevin Fong said what he saw in the Intensive Care Units every day during the Covid pandemic was far worse than the aftermath of the Soho bombing in 1999 and the July 7 London bombings.

"The intensive care unit was full. Their overflow areas were full, their non-invasive ventilation unit, their respiratory unit was full,” he said.

"It's genuinely the closest I've ever seen a hospital to a state of collapse in my entire career.”

The Covid inquiry was launched in June 2022 with the first public hearings held a year later.

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