Staff covid death payouts set to top £40m

The NHS Business Service Authority, which processes payments of the £60,000 death in service award for health and social care workers, confirmed it had agreed 613 payments so far, with another 62 pending.

However, this is still less than three-quarters of the total number of frontline staff who died with coronavirus, according to data from Office for National Statistics.

ONS information shows that from March to December last year 414 healthcare workers and 469 social care workers died with coronavirus.

The figures show 13 requests have been rejected so far as they did not meet the eligibility criteria.

Last November a claim had been made for less than half of health and social care staff who died with covid, as recorded by the ONS.

The data then showed West Hertfordshire Hospitals Trust as the NHS organisation with the highest number of staff who had died with covid, with six employees. The latest data released by the NHS BSA did not give the number of staff who had died from each provider.

In June, then health and social care secretary Matt Hancock told a parliamentary committee that while there had been “individual challenges”, it could not be proven that NHS staff had died of covid because of a lack of personal protective equipment.

He told MPs: “We’ve looked into this and there is no evidence that I have seen that a shortage of PPE provision led to anyone dying of covid. That’s from the evidence I have seen.”

Last March, NHS procurement staff had to approach sources including a medical fetish gear supplier to get enough stock.

Near the start of the pandemic the government set aside £15bn to spend on PPE and the contract award process has been controversial.

The ONS’s most recent data said that among healthcare workers – including doctors, nurses and midwives, nurse assistants, porters and paramedics – men had a statistically significant higher rate of death involving covid-19 compared with the rate of death involving covid in the general working population.

It said: “Of the individual healthcare worker occupations nurses and nursing auxiliaries and assistants had significantly raised rates among both sexes.”

Royal Berkshire Foundation Trust carried out an investigation into whether one of its doctors who died of covid in April 2020 after raising concerns about a lack of suitable PPE could have been better protected.

Asked in June this year, the trust would not release the findings of its report.

In a statement, the trust said: “The trust, along with all other NHS organisations, was working in a constantly changing landscape and the investigation has highlighted that, with the information available at the time, the trust was following Public Health England guidance on the use of PPE to protect the most at-risk staff and patients.

“Throughout the investigation we have kept in regular contact with Dr Tun’s family.”

It added: “The past eighteen months has been particularly challenging for all our staff and we have continued to provide emotional and wellbeing support for all our colleagues. Dr Tun’s death has been felt by us all and we will continue to honour his memory through a garden in our new staff wellbeing centre.”