Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure dialysis nurses treating patients who are shielding and vulnerable have access to adequate personal protective equipment.

Everybody working on the front line deserves to have the equipment they need to do their job safely and the Government is working night and day to make that happen. The United Kingdom Government and devolved administrations have published clear guidance on appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) for health and social care workers in different settings online at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/wuhan-novel-coronavirus-infection-prevention-and-control/covid-19-personal-protective-equipment-ppe

Having begun with a supply chain designed to accommodate delivery to 226 National Health Service trusts, we are now providing essential PPE supplies to 58,000 different settings, including care homes, hospices and community care organisations.

Since 25 February, we have delivered over 2.4 billion items of PPE across the health and social care system within England. This includes over 198.5 million items of PPE authorised for release to designated wholesalers for onward sale to primary and social care providers, community pharmacies and dentists and 151 million items of PPE to local resilience forums.