NHS ‘came close to collapse’ during Covid and patients were failed, inquiry finds

‘A scene from hell, not captured in data or news bulletins’published at 10:59 GMT

10:59 GMT

Jim Reed
Health reporter, reporting from the inquiry

Many hours of testimony to the Covid inquiry in autumn 2024 offered our clearest understanding yet of what was really going on at the height of the pandemic.

I was at the inquiry the day Prof Kevin Fong calmly talked through more than 40 visits he led to intensive care units, his voice cracking at times.

What he discovered at the hospitals he visited could not be found in the official NHS data or the main evening news bulletins at the time, he said.

“It really was like nothing else I’ve ever seen,” Prof Fong said. “These people were used to seeing death but not on that scale, and not like that.”

In late 2020, for example, he was sent to a midsize district hospital somewhere in England that was “bursting at the seams”.

One night, Prof Fong and his team helped to transfer 17 critically ill patients to other NHS sites – an emergency measure unheard of outside the pandemic.

“It is the closest I have ever seen a hospital to being in a state of operational collapse,” he said.

“It was just a scene from hell.”

You can read more about the testimony provided to the inquiry here.