Hundreds of doctors are planning to sue the NHS over claims inadequate PPE on the frontline has left them with long COVID, disabled, and in financial ruin.
Dr Kelly Fearnley, 37, was working on a COVID ward at Bradford Royal Infirmary in November 2020 when she caught coronavirus.
More than three years later, the effects of long COVID mean she is still unable to work. After episodes of violent shakes, hallucinations, and a resting heart rate more than double the average, she was diagnosed with limbic encephalitis – inflammation of parts of the brain.
Image: Swelling on Dr Fearnley’s eyelid after contracting COVID. Pic: Kelly Fearnley
Meanwhile, Dr Nathalie MacDermott – an infectious diseases registrar who treated people with the Ebola virus – says COVID has left her with spinal damage after her concerns about a lack of PPE during the pandemic were ignored.
A British Medical Association study of 600 doctors with long COVID last year revealed that 60% had suffered persistent ill health since contracting COVID, and around half (48%) had lost earnings.
Dr Fearnley co-founded Long COVID Doctors for Action (LCD4A), which is today pledging legal action against the NHS for negligent workplace exposure to coronavirus, resulting in injury and financial loss.
The group, which is being represented by the legal firm Bond Turner, claims the NHS decided to downgrade guidance as the virus took hold in March 2020, only requiring staff to wear blue surgical face masks, plastic aprons, and gloves when dealing with suspected or confirmed COVID cases.
This is in line with World Health Organisation (WHO) guidance, which says there is only strong evidence for more restrictive masks such as FFP3s, FFP2s, and N95s, being worn for “aerosol-generating procedures” – not general care of COVID patients.
But both the US and European public health authorities advise at least FFP3 or N95 masks for any healthcare worker in a COVID environment, with scientists leaning on both sides.
Advertisement
Dr Simon Clarke, associate professor in cellular microbiology at Reading University, told Sky News there is a “greater than 50% chance” healthcare workers who were infected in early 2020 contracted the virus at work, as lockdown meant other contact was significantly reduced – but there are no guarantees.
He added: “Some masks seem to be more effective than others and can vary quite a lot.
“We have to remember that there was a shortage nationally of PPE. So the supplies of better, more effective masks might have been somewhat restricted.”
The public inquiry into the UK’s handling of the pandemic has heard PPE provision for healthcare workers was “hopelessly inadequate”. Government and public health officials have admitted “mistakes were made”.
Image: Dr Fearnley’s painful skin rashes after contracting COVID. Pic: Kelly Fearnley
Dr Fearnley, who is currently on 12 months’ unpaid leave, having not worked since the end of 2020, says she used higher-grade masks from when she started work as a junior doctor in the spring until she was deployed to a COVID ward in November.
She said: “I walked onto the COVID ward and there was just a small box with blue masks.
“I asked where the other masks were and was told ‘we’re using these now, don’t worry they’ll protect you’.
“The sudden downgrading of PPE was not based on the known science.
“I didn’t have time to think about it. But I spent 12 hours a day, for five consecutive days, surrounded by COVID-positive patients in the absence of adequate respiratory protection.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
0:44
Dr Fearnley films her breathing and heart rate difficulties
‘My brain is still infected’
Dr Fearnley says she tested positive for COVID after one week on the ward. For four weeks she had flu-like symptoms and suffered breathlessness, as well as a swelling around her eye and a red rash across her body.
She tried to return to work after three weeks but only lasted two hours before dizziness and breathlessness forced her to go back home.
“It was like a switch flipped in my body,” she said.
Her long COVID symptoms over the next two years left her largely bedbound and, at times, suicidal.
“I started to turn more of a corner after two-and-a-half years. Now I can get dressed and move around the house. I can exert myself cognitively and physically a little bit more.
“But I still deal with symptoms daily, my brain still feels infected and there’s an ongoing pathological process in my body I believe needs treatment before I can recover. I feel like I have sustained a traumatic brain injury.
“At 37 I’m living and relying on my 70-year-old father for support. If it wasn’t for him I’d be homeless.”
Image: Dr Fearnley struggled with pins and needles in her arms and legs. Pic: Kelly Fearnley
Call for other doctors to join legal action
LCD4A is calling for other doctors and healthcare workers who worked in England and Wales and suffered similar circumstances to join its group legal action.
Hundreds have signed up, many say they have lost their jobs, and had relationships end. Several of those still employed by the NHS claim they have reached maximum sick pay or are struggling to claim benefits.
One consultant, who asked to remain anonymous, but whose income protection and life insurance were denied, said: “I was once at the peak of my career and have had to give up all my dreams and become a shell of my former self.
“There is no hope at present and at times I wish I died during COVID.”
One junior doctor said her long COVID complications mean she feels unable to ever have children – or become a consultant.
The 33-year-old described how brain fog and mobility problems cause her to burn herself on hot cups of tea, having failed to “work out how to hold them safely”.
GP members have reported losing their practices and years on from their original infection one still described going to the toilet as feeling “like climbing Mount Everest”.
Ebola expert warned London hospital about masks
Dr MacDermott is another LCD4A member who moved from her job as a clinical lecturer in paediatric infectious diseases at King’s College London to work on the COVID frontline in March 2020.
The 41-year-old was moved to Great Ormond Street Hospital and worked as a paediatric registrar.
She caught COVID at the end of March and was off work with classic symptoms for 10 days. When she returned in early April, she says she was moved to a different ward, which was largely caring for children with multi-system inflammatory syndrome – a potentially fatal response to COVID seen in children that causes inflammation of various organs.
Image: Dr Nathalie MacDermott now uses a mobility scooter. Pic: Dr Nathalie MacDermott
Having worked on Ebola and cholera in Africa and Asia, with her background in infectious diseases, she was alarmed by the lack of PPE – and raised it with senior managers.
“I spoke to the head of infection control and said it was unacceptable. I said we should at least have FFP masks but I was told we didn’t need them.”
She claims when she told her staff to wear higher-grade PPE, people would “come to the wards and tell them off for wearing PPE they shouldn’t be wearing”.
Dr MacDermott believes that those responsible for infection control policy across NHS England are to blame for what she, Dr Fearnley, and hundreds of others have suffered as a result of long COVID.
“At the end of the day, people made decisions and those decisions had consequences, and those people are not taking responsibility for those decisions.
“When I worked on Ebola in Liberia, I told healthcare workers that I would never ask them to go into an environment wearing PPE that I wouldn’t go into wearing that PPE myself.
“The NHS sold out their staff during the pandemic. And I’m not going to stay quiet about it because we haven’t learned and we’re still doing it.
“If we had another pandemic tomorrow, we would make exactly the same mistakes again.”
COVID caused spinal cord damage
Dr MacDermott says she caught COVID again and developed severe pain in her neck, back, arms, and soles of her feet.
She continued to be off work and by September 2020 her legs had become “jerky” and her “mobility took a turn for the worse”.
Long COVID has also affected her bladder and bowels, and she now uses a mobility scooter as she is unable to walk without crutches for more than around 100m (330ft).
“The overall conclusion is that I have something called a COVID-related myelopathy, which means COVID has damaged my spine, but we don’t know exactly what that damage is and how it’s done it.”
Dr MacDermott returned to work after almost two years in March 2022. She has had COVID twice since, which she says has set back her neurological symptoms each time.
Her research funding comes to an end in six months and she has so far been unsuccessful in getting further grants. Her health means she can’t do a full-time clinical role.
“So even though I’ve finally got to the end of my training, having graduated from medical school in 2006, I now can’t be the paediatric infectious diseases consultant I wanted to be.”
Both she and Dr Fearnley say they do not feel safe returning to work in the NHS with its current infection control policy, which is still the same.
Dr Fearnley added: “Coronavirus is unequivocally airborne and warrants respiratory protection.
“Our employers have a legal duty of care. Workers have a right to be protected at work and patients have a right to be cared for in safe environments. Hospitals are failing in their duty of care.”
Legal challenge of proving negligence
Legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg says all claimants face a considerable legal challenge in proving the NHS was negligent at that time.
“They have to show that their employers, the hospitals they were working in, didn’t meet what were then-accepted standards of care.
“Presumably when people didn’t really understand COVID, didn’t know about long COVID, perhaps didn’t know what level of protection was necessary for professionals working in the health service.”
He added that the doctors need to clarify which NHS or government bodies they are going to sue.
“They’ve got to decide who was actually responsible and whether they were negligent or not.”
Sara Stranger, director and head of clinical negligence and serious injury claims at Bond Turner, said: “As the nation stood at their doors clapping, our frontline NHS workers risked their lives while caring for patients, without proper protection.
“Thousands contracted the virus themselves, and many have since developed long COVID.
“We are committed to seeking justice for those who were exposed to an unnecessary risk of infection while working on the front line.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson told Sky News: “Throughout the pandemic the government acted to save lives and livelihoods, prevent the NHS being overwhelmed and deliver a world-leading vaccine rollout which protected millions of lives across the nation.
“We have always said there are lessons to be learnt from the pandemic and we are committed to learning from the COVID-19 inquiry’s findings, which will play a key role in informing the government’s planning and preparations for the future. We will consider all recommendations made to the department in full.”
Sky News has contacted NHS England and the UK Health Security Agency for further comment.
Another hint that tax rises are coming in this autumn’s budget has been given by a senior minister.
Speaking to Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander was asked if Sir Keir Starmer and the rest of the cabinet had discussed hiking taxes in the wake of the government’s failed welfare reforms, which were shot down by their own MPs.
Trevor Phillips asked specifically if tax rises were discussed among the cabinet last week – including on an away day on Friday.
Tax increases were not discussed “directly”, Ms Alexander said, but ministers were “cognisant” of the challenges facing them.
Asked what this means, Ms Alexander added: “I think your viewers would be surprised if we didn’t recognise that at the budget, the chancellor will need to look at the OBR forecast that is given to her and will make decisions in line with the fiscal rules that she has set out.
“We made a commitment in our manifesto not to be putting up taxes on people on modest incomes, working people. We have stuck to that.”
Ms Alexander said she wouldn’t comment directly on taxes and the budget at this point, adding: “So, the chancellor will set her budget. I’m not going to sit in a TV studio today and speculate on what the contents of that budget might be.
“When it comes to taxation, fairness is going to be our guiding principle.”
Spreaker
This content is provided by Spreaker, which may be using cookies and other technologies.
To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies.
You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable Spreaker cookies or to allow those cookies just once.
You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options.
Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Spreaker cookies.
To view this content you can use the button below to allow Spreaker cookies for this session only.
Afterwards, shadow home secretary Chris Philp told Phillips: “That sounds to me like a barely disguised reference to tax rises coming in the autumn.”
He then went on to repeat the Conservative attack lines that Labour are “crashing the economy”.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
10:43
Chris Philp also criticsed the government’s migration deal with France
Mr Philp then attacked the prime minister as “weak” for being unable to get his welfare reforms through the Commons.
Discussions about potential tax rises have come to the fore after the government had to gut its welfare reforms.
Sir Keir had wanted to change Personal Independence Payments (PIP), but a large Labour rebellion forced him to axe the changes.
With the savings from these proposed changes – around £5bn – already worked into the government’s sums, they will now need to find the money somewhere else.
The general belief is that this will take the form of tax rises, rather than spending cuts, with more money needed for military spending commitments, as well as other areas of priority for the government, such as the NHS.
It is “shameful” that black boys growing up in London are “far more likely” to die than white boys, Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley has told Sky News.
In a wide-ranging interview with Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, the commissioner saidthat relations with minority communities are “difficult for us”, while also speaking about the state of the justice system and the size of the police force.
Sir Mark, who came out of retirement to become head of the UK’s largest police force in 2022, said: “We can’t pretend otherwise that we’ve got a history between policing and black communities where policing has got a lot wrong.
“And we get a lot more right today, but we do still make mistakes. That’s not in doubt. I’m being as relentless in that as it can be.”
He said the “vast majority” of the force are “good people”.
However, he added: “But that legacy, combined with the tragedy that some of this crime falls most heavily in black communities, that creates a real problem because the legacy creates concern.”
Sir Mark, who also leads the UK’s counter-terrorism policing, said black boys growing up in London “are far more likely to be dead by the time they’re 18” than white boys.
“That’s, I think, shameful for the city,” he admitted.
“The challenge for us is, as we reach in to tackle those issues, that confrontation that comes from that reaching in, whether it’s stop and search on the streets or the sort of operations you seek.
“The danger is that’s landing in an environment with less trust.
“And that makes it even harder. But the people who win out of that [are] all of the criminals.”
Image: Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley
The commissioner added: “I’m so determined to find a way to get past this because if policing in black communities can find a way to confront these issues, together we can give black boys growing up in London equal life chances to white boys, which is not what we’re seeing at the moment.
“And it’s not simply about policing, is it?”
Sir Mark said: “I think black boys are several times more likely to be excluded from school, for example, than white boys.
“And there are multiple issues layered on top of each other that feed into disproportionality.”
‘We’re stretched, but there’s hope and determination’
Sir Mark said the Met is a “stretched service” but people who call 999 can expect an officer to attend.
“If you are in the middle of a crisis and something awful is happening and you dial 999, officers will get there really quickly,” Sir Mark said.
“I don’t pretend we’re not a stretched service.
“We are smaller than I think we ought to be, but I don’t want to give a sort of message of a lack of hope or a lack of determination.”
“I’ve seen the mayor and the home secretary fighting hard for police resourcing,” he added.
“It’s not what I’d want it to be, but it’s better than it might be without their efforts.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
0:39
How police tracked and chased suspected phone thief
‘Close to broken’ justice system facing ‘awful’ delays
Sir Mark said the criminal justice system was “close to broken” and can be “frustrating” for police officers.
“The thing that is frustrating is that the system – and no system can be perfect – but when the system hasn’t managed to turn that person’s life around and get them on the straight and narrow, and it just becomes a revolving door,” he said.
“When that happens, of course that’s frustrating for officers.
“So the more successful prisons and probation can be in terms of getting people onto a law-abiding life from the path they’re on, the better.
“But that is a real challenge. I mean, we’re talking just after Sir Brian Leveson put his report out about the close-to-broken criminal justice system.
“And it’s absolutely vital that those repairs and reforms that he’s talking about happen really quickly, because the system is now so stressed.”
Giving an example, the police commissioner went on: “We’ve got Snaresbrook [Crown Court] in London – it’s now got more than 100 cases listed for 2029.”
Sir Mark asked Trevor Phillips to imagine he had been the victim of a crime, saying: “We’ve caught the person, we’ve charged him, ‘great news, Mr Phillips, we’ve got him charged, they’re going to court’.
“And then a few weeks later, I see the trial’s listed for 2029. That doesn’t feel great, does it?”
Asked about the fact that suspects could still be on the streets for years before going to trial, Sir Mark conceded it’s “pretty awful”.
He added: “If it’s someone on bail, who might have stolen your phone or whatever, and they’re going in for a criminal court trial, that could be four years away. And that’s pretty unacceptable, isn’t it?”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
She pinned the primary blame for the Met’s culture on its past leadership and found stop and search and the use of force against black people was excessive.
At the time, Sir Mark, who had been commissioner for six months when the report was published, said he would not use the labels of institutionally racist, institutionally misogynistic and institutionally homophobic, which Baroness Casey insisted the Met deserved.
However, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who helped hire Sir Mark – and could fire him – made it clear the commissioner agreed with Baroness Casey’s verdict.
A few months after the report, Sir Mark launched a two-year £366m plan to overhaul the Met, including increased emphasis on neighbourhood policing to rebuild public trust and plans to recruit 500 more community support officers and an extra 565 people to work with teams investigating domestic violence, sexual offences and child sexual abuse and exploitation.
A leading NHS hospital has warned measles is on the rise among children in the UK, after treating 17 cases since June.
Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool said it is “concerned” about the increasing number of children and young people who are contracting the highly contagious virus.
It said the cases it has treated since June were for effects and complications of the disease, which, in rare cases, can be fatal if left untreated.
“We are concerned about the increasing number of children and young people who are contracting measles. Measles is a highly contagious viral illness which can cause children to be seriously unwell, requiring hospital treatment, and in rare cases, death,” the hospital said in a statement to Sky News.
In a separate open letter to parents and carers in Merseyside earlier this month, Alder Hey, along with the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) and directors of Public Health for Liverpool, Sefton and Knowsley, warned the increase in measles in the region could be down to fewer people getting vaccinated.
The letter read: “We are seeing more cases of measles in our children and young people because fewer people are having the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles and two other viruses called mumps and rubella.
“Children in hospital, who are very poorly for another reason, are at higher risk of catching the virus.”
What are the symptoms of measles?
The first symptoms of measles include:
• A high temperature
• A runny or blocked nose
• Sneezing
• A cough
• Red, sore or watery eyes
Cold-like symptoms are followed a few days later by a rash, which starts on the face and behind the ears, before it spreads.
The spots are usually raised and can join together to form blotchy patches which are not usually itchy.
Some people may get small spots in their mouth too.
What should you do if you think your child has measles?
Ask for an urgent GP appointment or call 111 if you think your child has measles.
If your child has been vaccinated, it is very unlikely they have measles.
You should not go to the doctor without calling ahead, as measles is very infectious.
If your child is diagnosed with measles by a doctor, make sure they avoid close contact with babies and anyone who is pregnant or has a weakened immune system.
Image: The skin of a patient after three days of measles infection
It comes after a Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) report released earlier this month determined that uptake of vaccines in the UK has stalled over the last decade and is, in many cases, declining.
It said none of the routine childhood vaccinations have met the 95% coverage target since 2021, putting youngsters at risk of measles, meningitis and whooping cough.
The MMR vaccine has been available through the NHS for years. Two doses gives lifelong protection against measles, mumps and rubella.
Image: Two doses of the MMR vaccine give lifelong protection against measles, mumps and rubella. Pic: iStock
According to the latest NHS data, Liverpool was one of the cities outside London with the lowest uptake of the MMR vaccination in 2023-2024.
By the time children were five years old, 86.5% had been give one dose, decreasing to 73.4% for a second dose.
The RCPCH report put the nationwide decline down to fears over vaccinations, as well as families having trouble booking appointments and a lack of continuous care in the NHS, with many seeing a different GP on each visit.
In the US, measles cases are at their highest in more than three decades.
Cases reached 1,288 on Wednesday this week, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, with 14 states battling active outbreaks.
The largest outbreak started five months ago in communities in West Texas, where vaccination uptake is low. Since then, three people have died – including two children in Texas and an adult in New Mexico – with dozens more in hospital.