Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will undertake a review of the role of PPE shortages in the deaths of the 760 care workers who died in the period 21 March to 8 May 2020.

The Department remains committed to ensuring that those on the frontline responding to COVID-19 are provided with the critical personal protective equipment (PPE) they need to do their job safely. On 15 April, the Adult Social Care Action Plan set out how the Government will support the adult social care sector specifically. This included guidance on the use and distribution of PPE in social care settings.

The hon. member has quoted a figure from the recent ‘COVID-19: review of disparities in risks and outcomes’ report by Public Health England (PHE) published on 2 June 2020. The 760 figure which the hon. member has referred to is the total number of deaths from all causes, not excess deaths, and not COVID-19 deaths. The figure also refers to all those grouped under ‘caring personal services’, which includes care workers, but also includes other occupations such as ambulance staff, dental nurses, and undertakers. By filtering the data to ‘social care workers’ (as defined by the Office for National Statistics in their publication on COVID-19 related deaths by occupation), the PHE analysis of mortality data shows that at least 214 deaths involving COVID-19 among social care workers were registered from 21 March to 8 May 2020 (in England, of those aged 20-64 years).