Nurses' Corona Spread Dread

Hospital staff fear moving between wards is infecting more patients

- Vivienne Aitken

Nurses working in Scottish hospitals fear being moved between wards could be helping the spread of coronavirus.

It comes after figures revealed 901 patients had caught Covid-19 in hospital, with 218 of them dying of the infection, despite having been in for a separate condition.

Nurses say they must stick to their own wards during outbreaks of winter vomiting bugs but they claim the same rules are not being enforced in hospitals with Covid-19.

Some have been moved from COVID wards to A&E in the same shift while others have been moved from surgical wards to COVID wards.

Now they fear staff movement could be the source of the problem.

One senior nurse at Gartnavel Hospital, Glasgow, said: “When there is an outbreak of winter vomiting virus, nurses have to stick to their own ward to prevent the infection spreading but there are not the same rules being applied to COVID.

“Staff are being moved between wards and the level of PPE is not all it should be.

“Infection control management are looking to blame staff for the disease spreading but we have patients who have been brought here from other hospitals and we are not convinced they have been swabbed properly to ensure they’re free of the virus.

“There are patients who are getting cancer surgeries but staff are still going to COVID wards and are told that’s OK so long as they don’t go back to their own ward that day.