Hospitals were forced to make “major engineering and structural changes” at the height of the pandemic to ensure patients on ventilators received enough oxygen.
Oxygen supplies were put under huge strain globally when Covid-19 hit and thousands of patients needed hospital treatment. But as well as struggling to get their hands on the stuff, it has been revealed doctors in the UK struggled to deliver enough of it to patients due to the “inadequate” equipment many were using in the early days of the pandemic.
“The requirement for high flow oxygen as a method for treating Covid-19 came as a surprise,” Nigel Edwards, chief executive of Nuffield Trust, a health think tank, told the UK’s official Covid inquiry today.
