The extent to which Covid-19 was spreading in hospitals across England, which could have helped trusts reduce infections on wards, was not shared with NHS trusts for weeks, ITV News can reveal.
At the height of the coronavirus outbreak in late March NHS England and the Department of Health became aware that up to 20% of Covid-19 cases were being acquired in hospitals, not in the community.
But NHS England didn’t inform individual trusts of how they were performing until weeks later.
Allowing trusts to compare their performance in controlling the spread of Covid-19 between patients and staff could have saved lives.
“There’s always lessons we could learn from other trusts,” said Professor Michael Weekes, a consultant in infectious diseases at Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge. They’ve implemented a hospital-wide testing programme for all staff as well as compulsory mask-wearing in all clinical areas of the hospital.
“If we found there was another trust that had a surprisingly low number of infections and there was something else that we could be doing then we’d do it straight away,” he added.
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