Matt Hancock, the health secretary, has been the government’s public face for much of the coronavirus crisis, especially since Boris Johnson became ill. As such he has made pledges in a series of key areas – how do they measure up so far?
Testing
What he said:
2 April: “I’m now setting the goal of 100,000 tests per day by the end of this month. That is the goal and I’m determined we’ll get there.”
10 April: “I can announce today that we have capacity for all key social care staff and NHS staff who need to be tested to get those tests.”
Where we stand:
The latest daily total for tests, with two weeks to go before the end of the month, is just 14,982, less than 15% of the target, with 12,081 carried out by NHS laboratories and 2,486 by the government’s commercial partners in drive-through centres.
Personal protective equipment (PPE) for health and care staff
What he said:
23 March: “I am determined to ensure that the right kit gets to the right hospital, the right ambulance service, the right doctors’ surgery, right across the country. There have been challenges and I can see that. We’re on it and trying to solve all the problems.”
10 April: “We need everyone to treat PPE like the precious resource it is. Everyone should use the equipment they clinically need, in line with the guidelines: no more and no less.”
Where we stand:
Despite significant government efforts to improve the flow of PPE, there are still regular concerns that hospital staff, and especially workers in care homes, do not have sufficient supplies. Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, said this week that while the great majority of PPE was arriving on time, some gaps remained: “It would help if those gaps were publicly acknowledged and the reasons for them more clearly set out.”
Ventilators
What he said:
15 March: “We’ve got high quality engineering in this country and we want anybody who has the manufacturing capability to turn to a manufacturer of ventilators to do that.”
5 April: “At the moment we have between 9,000 and 10,000 ventilators within the NHS right now and we have the 2,000 spare that are critical care beds with ventilator capacity should people need to come into them and we’re ramping that up. Our goal, instead of the 30,000, is that we need 18,000 ventilators over the coming two weeks.”
Where we stand:
There are 10,120 available ventilators, with around 1,000 acquired from the private health sector and the rest from imports and orders from small suppliers. None of the ventilators designed by non-medical engineering companies such as Dyson have yet been approved for use.
Intensive care
What he said:
February (from NHS England statistics): There were 4,122 adult critical care beds open and 3,342 occupied, giving an occupancy rate of 81.1%.
12 April: “The latest figures show that in Great Britain we have 2,295 spare critical care beds, up 150 from yesterday.”
Where we stand:
Other figures from 13 April said there were 3,228 patients in critical care beds. That would make a total of 5,523, an increase of 1,400 places, and an occupancy rate of 58%.
