It had been apparent from the start of the pandemic that both patients and healthcare workers are at significant risk of acquiring COVID-19 in hospitals. In an early report from Wuhan more than 40% of infections were hospital-acquired, and three quarters of these cases were healthcare staff.

This echoed the high rates of healthcare worker infections and deaths in the SARS and MERS epidemics.

As the number of COVID deaths stacked up, newspaper front pages soon included the faces of health and social care workers who had died, mostly from ethnic minorities.

By July 2020, amid concerns over the provision and adequacy of PPE, approximately 600 UK health and social care workers had died of COVID.

18 months on what more do we know. How safe are we?

A change in risk assessment, including an increase in the use of aerosol-protection PPE in wards where staff come in close contact with patients who are or may be infected, is long overdue.

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