{"id":337400,"date":"2026-03-19T12:31:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T12:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/337400\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T12:31:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T12:31:07","slug":"nhs-came-close-to-collapse-during-covid-and-patients-were-failed-inquiry-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/337400\/","title":{"rendered":"NHS ‘came close to collapse’ during Covid and patients were failed, inquiry finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘A scene from hell, not captured in data or news bulletins’published at 10:59 GMT<\/p>\n

10:59 GMT<\/p>\n

\"\"Jim Reed
Health reporter, reporting from the inquiry<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really was like nothing else I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d Prof Fong said. \u201cThese people were used to seeing death but not on that scale, and not like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

In late 2020, for example, he was sent to a midsize district hospital somewhere in England that was \u201cbursting at the seams\u201d.<\/p>\n

One night, Prof Fong and his team helped to transfer 17 critically ill patients to other NHS sites \u2013 an emergency measure unheard of outside the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the closest I have ever seen a hospital to being in a state of operational collapse,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just a scene from hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can read more about the testimony provided to the inquiry here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘A scene from hell, not captured in data or news bulletins’published at 10:59 GMT 10:59 GMT Jim ReedHealth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-337400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}