Respirator masks that fitted Black medical staff better during the pandemic were purchased in ‘much smaller’ quantities, the Covid inquiry has heard.
Chris Wormald, permanent secretary to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) since 2016, confirmed the department had stocked lower levels of personal protective equipment (PPE) suitable for Black staff working in healthcare, and that little planning had been done to consider the equality of PPE provisions. It raises the possibility that staff from Black and Asian backgrounds, who make up a disproportionately large amount of the NHS workforce, may have been harder hit by frontline PPE shortages.
Asked whether his own departmental briefing papers in July 2020 reported that “respirators – which have been provided for – frequently fitted white faces” but those “better for Black staff were purchased in much smaller quantity,” Wormwald agreed.
