Covid Inquiry: Matt Hancock says PPE was within hours from running out during pandemic

Hospitals in England were within "hours" of running out of personal protective equipment (PPE) during the early months of Covid , Matt Hancock has revealed.

The former Tory health secretary told the Covid inquiry on Thursday that some PPE was in very short supply during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020.

Lead counsel to the inquiry, Jacqueline Carey KC, asked Mr Hancock: “Do you accept that entering the coronavirus pandemic as we did, without a single gown, severely hampered the ability to provide safe and appropriate PPE for healthcare workers?”

Mr Hancock replied: “The stockpile that we had was not as good as it needs to be in the future, absolutely.”

Asked if England ever ran out of PPE, he said: “As a whole? No, but individual locations did.

“We came extremely close. We came within small numbers of items on a regular basis during April and May 2020 – by the second wave, we were in better shape.”

Asked about if there was no more stock of gowns in April 2020, he explained: "Gowns I think at one point we got to within six or seven hours of running out.

“We were working incredibly hard to make sure that we didn’t (run out). We nearly did.”

Subscribe free to our weekly newsletter for exclusive and original coverage from ITV News. Direct to your inbox every Friday morning.

Hancock said that in a future pandemic, facemasks should be made mandatory for hospital staff, visitors, and workers immediately, with supplies stocked at each hospital to ensure this can happen.

He added that vaccines should be mandatory for NHS and social care staff in any future pandemic, with masks required in hospitals from day one.

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

Hancock was met with calls of “liar” from demonstrators as he left Dorland House after giving evidence on Thursday.

Have you heard The Trapped? Listen as Daniel Hewitt exposes the UK's dirty secret