Coronavirus: A&E closed after nurse training session became ‘super-spreading event’ — report

Lack of masks and social distancing was reportedly cause of outbreak at Hillingdon hospital

Hillingdon hospital in west London has closed its A&E to emergency patients due to an outbreak of Covid-19 (AFP via Getty Images)

An outbreak of coronavirus in Hillingdon Hospital in north-west London that led to the closure of its accident and emergency unit was reportedly caused by nurses not wearing face masks or social distancing during a training session.

According to The Guardian, a doctor described the training session as a “super-spreading event”, as an inquiry found that a nurse who was infected with Covid-19 had spread the virus to 16 other people.

Hillingdon Hospital, located in Boris Johnson’s constituency, closed its A&E department last week after 70 hospital staff went into isolation due to the outbreak.

Sources told the newspaper that some nurses who attended the training session did not wear a face mask or practice staying two metres apart. During the lunch break, social distancing “broke down to a significant extent”.

It is not immediately clear why the training session took place, given video conferencing has been the preferred method for conducting medical training to avoid gatherings of people.

One senior doctor told The Guardian that most meetings “have been avoided since late March or moved online”, or involved a minimal number of people so that social distancing could be observed.

He was quoted as saying: “This training session became a super-spreading event. The sanctioning of such a large gathering of health care workers indoors seems extremely unwise and out of kilter with how the hospital has handled meetings of all kinds during Covid.”

The nurse believed to have been the source of the outbreak is thought to have contracted the virus from a patient who was in hospital for treatment. She reportedly became more ill as the training session went on and had to be taken to the hospital’s A&E.

After the department closed, NHS England shared a message to staff from chief executive Sarah Tedford with The Independent, following reports she had blamed staff for the outbreak.

In the letter, she addressed the outbreak and said: “All the way through this [pandemic] we have followed national guidance and it has kept us safe. So what is happening now?

“I am told some of you are not wearing appropriate masks and you are not adhering to social distancing. This has resulted in an outbreak on a ward where our staff have contracted Covid-19.

“If you do not follow the guidance, we cannot keep you safe. I don’t like wearing a mask, but it would be irresponsible of me not to do so. Please think very carefully about what you are doing and ask yourselves if you are keeping yourself safe and if you are keeping each other safe?

“This is no time to be complacent; we are not out of the woods yet.”

All members of staff are required to wear a mask while at work under hospital policy.

The Independent has contacted Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Trust for comment.