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UK plans to burn billions in wasted pandemic protective gear

Published:Friday | June 10, 2022 | 4:59 PM
In this Thursday, April 16, 2020, photo, a view of masks and goggles, part of personal protective equipment, to avoid being infected or transmitting coronavirus, at the Nightingale Hospital North West set up in the Manchester Central Convention Complex in Manchester, northern England. The British government plans to burn billions of pounds in unusable protective equipment purchased in haste during the coronavirus pandemic to generate power, a public spending watchdog said Friday, June 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Jon Super, FIle)

LONDON (AP) — The British government plans to burn billions of pounds in unusable personal protective equipment purchased in haste during the coronavirus pandemic, a public spending watchdog said Friday.

The idea of burning the face masks, gowns and other equipment to generate power has not impressed the watchdog committee.

The panel is investigating how the government came to spend four billion pounds ($5 billion) on protective gear that has to be dumped because it is defective or does not meet UK standards.

Parliament's Public Accounts Committee said the government planned to dispose of 15,000 pallets a month of the gear “via a combination of recycling and burning to generate power.”

“The costs and environmental impact of disposing of the excess and unusable PPE is unclear,” the committee noted.

Pat Cullen, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, a professional body, accused the government of “sending billions of pounds up in smoke.”

The government said not all the four billion pounds' worth of equipment would be burned.

The Department of Health said only about 670 million pounds' worth of the PPE was “unusable in any context.”

It said some of the excess stock would be repurposed for use by dentists or donated to charities, transport agencies and other countries.

In a report, the accounts committee found that the Department of Health lost 75% of the 12 billion pounds it spent on PPE in the first year of the pandemic to inflated prices and faulty products.

Opposition Labour Party lawmaker Meg Hillier, who chairs the committee, said the PPE saga was “perhaps the most shameful episode in the UK government response to the pandemic.”

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