It started with a routine admission from another hospital on Friday 3 April. An elderly patient came on to ward 15 of the Western General in Edinburgh with a mild cough, but not the kind of cough to worry the medical staff in charge. Two days later the woman’s cough became more severe and a fever set in. The staff decided to test her for Covid-19, and a day later the result came back: positive.
The nurses who had treated the patient without any face protection for two days were ordered to wear full PPE when they entered her single room, but it seems the virus had already spread widely among medics and support staff. Within a week it had affected the entire ward. By Tuesday 14 April, sources say, more than 24 members of medical staff who worked on ward 15 were off work with confirmed or suspected Covid-19, and more than 20 patients were also affected, either testing positive for the virus or showing worrying symptoms. All of the ward’s nurses, four doctors, and physiotherapists and support staff were affected. “Over the following nine days, patients and staff dropped like flies as Covid-19 swept the ward,” said one source. “Masks were finally approved for constant use on Thursday 9 April, but it was too late.”
The Western is the base for eastern Scotland’s regional infectious diseases unit. It set up Scotland’s first drive-through testing centre for health workers, and community testing and track and trace teams. Its specialists were consulted by hospitals in northern Italy as the outbreak grew there. Yet, according to the Guardian’s sources, staff in ward 15 struggled to get the correct PPE, often “scrounging supplies” from other wards. There were inadequate stocks of the correct grade of mask – type 2Rs – and other essentials on the ward for treating Covid-19 patients, two sources said.
“We had problems with all stock, not just PPE,” said one source. “Bed linen, bed pans etc all ran out at various times. There was no universal testing – not policy. Policy was to only test patients who were symptomatic. No staff testing initially, just isolate on symptoms.”
On 15 April, 12 days after the coughing patient arrived, ward 15 was shut down and deep-cleaned.
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