Covid: PPE shortage when nurse Leilani Medel died

Leilani Medel died 10 days after being rushed to hospital in April 2020

Hospital staff had to use bin bags as PPE in the early months of the Covid pandemic, an inquest has heard.

On 9 April 2020, Leilani Medel, 41, became one of the first health workers in Wales to die of Covid.

Consultant Dr Joseph Riddell told Pontypridd Coroner's Court there were "huge shortages" of PPE at the time.

A coroner said, on the balance of probabilities, Mrs Medel contracted Covid at the care home where she worked and he gave a narrative conclusion.

However, David Regan said it was not possible to put her death down to industrial disease.

Mrs Medel and her husband Johnny were both on ventilators in adjacent hospital beds in the days before she died, the hearing was told.

Dr Riddell, the intensive care consultant at Princess of Wales Hospital, Bridgend, when Mrs Medel was admitted, said there was a "gradual deterioration" in her condition "every day".

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He said it would have been difficult for Mrs Medel's employer - Anwen Care Home - to provide adequate PPE to prevent Covid transmission.

He explained that even staff in the Princess of Wales hospital were having to source and buy their own PPE at the time.

"We were using binbags at that point", he said.

"That's in the best-resourced part of the health sector. I'm not surprised by how little the care homes had and that is a tragedy in itself."

Mrs Medel was on a ventilator alongside her husband Johnny, who survived the disease

Dr Riddell said Mrs Medel was taken to intensive care and placed on a ventilator alongside with her husband on 1 April, adding that it was "not something that's done lightly".

"All we were doing was trying to buy time for her body to clear the virus," he said.

"I vividly remember looking at both of them, communicating with her family."

Mrs Medel died on 9 April 2020 and Dr Riddell said he was "by her bedside when she died".

He said that it was "very difficult" for staff on the intensive care ward as Mrs Medel "was well known to a number of our Filipino nurses... as it's a small community".

Mr Regan said, "on the balance of probabilities" Mrs Medel was likely to have come into contact with the virus when "three patients exhaled particles" in unventilated rooms in the care home, but "in my judgement, industrial disease would not be appropriate in this case".

Overall he said he was "satisfied" that she "contracted Covid-19 whilst working at the Anwen care home", but it would "strain the evidence to go beyond that".

Addressing Mr Medel, he said "you have behaved with great dignity throughout. I'm very sorry for the effect on you and your family".

Sense of peace

After the hearing Mr Medel said it had been a "comfort" to know he was side-by-side with his wife in the intensive care unit, a fact he had not known before the hearing.

"It feels right to know that finally that big question, where my wife contracted the coronavirus, that I was saying about since day one, she got it from work," he added.

He said the coroner's finding gave him a sense of "peace".

"Finally I can lay my wife to rest now, and she can rest in peace, and all my questions for her have been answered."

"I will never forget her, she was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."