‘Scenes from hell’: Hospitals ran out of body bags and were close to collapse in pandemic

A senior medic broke down in tears as he described scenes “from hell” on intensive care wards during the Covid pandemic, with staff running out of body bags and sick patients “raining from the sky”.

Professor Kevin Fong – former national clinical adviser in emergency preparedness, resilience and response at NHS England – recalled his experience while speaking at the Covid inquiry on Thursday 26 September.

He was on the scene of the Soho bombing in 1999 and worked in A&E during the July 7 London bombings but said “nothing that I saw… was as bad as Covid was every single day” for the hospitals most badly hit during the pandemic.

Speaking in central London, Professor Fong said: “The scale of death experienced by the intensive care teams during Covid was unlike anything they had ever seen before.

“They’re no strangers to death – they are the intensive care unit. They look after some of the sickest patients in the hospital, but the scale of death was truly, truly astounding.”