NHS hospitals at the forefront of the battle against coronavirus are about ‘to run out of essential drugs’ to look after intensive care patients, according to a leaked document published today.
Medics across Europe sounded the alarm in a letter to governments on Tuesday.
To manage the most severe cases of COVID-19, resuscitators have to immerse the patients in an artificial coma, and intubate them.
They use powerful anaesthesia drugs to do this, such as curare and propofol, and these are the ones that are rapidly disappearing.
In a leaked letter to their respective governments doctors called for emergency measures to deal with the shortages of these two drugs.
Powerful anaesthesia drugs, such as Curare and Propofol (pictured), are the ones that are rapidly disappearing. They are used to manage people with the most severe forms of COVID-19
‘Hospitals will soon run out of essential drugs to treat COVID-19 patients hospitalised in intensive care units,’ the letter, leaked to Le Monde newspaper in France, reads.
‘Without European collaboration to ensure a continuous supply of medicines, they may no longer be able to provide adequate intensive care within one to two weeks.’
The signatories are all part of the European Alliance of University Hospitals, and include the CEO of London’s Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust and representatives from San Raffaele in Milan, Vall d´Hebron in Barcelona, and the Charité – Universitätsmedizin hospital in Berlin.
The letter continues: ‘At this rate of consumption, the stocks of the hospitals most affected will be empty in a few days, and in two weeks they will be empty for those who have larger stocks.
‘This has already led to some hospitals buying drugs or dosages different from what they are used to.
‘It is extremely worrying to see nurses and medical students overworked and often less experienced using products and dosages with which they are not familiar.’
A French government spokesman confirmed that it had received the letter from the European Alliance of University Hospitals on Tuesday.
A Guy’s and St Thomas’ spokesperson said: ‘During this unprecedented rise in demand for intensive care treatments, it is essential that we maintain collaboration and cross border support to ensure timely access to key medicines across the UK and Europe.
‘At Guy’s and St Thomas’, as is the case across the NHS, we will continue to closely monitor supplies of medicines to make sure that we have adequate levels for patients, as we always do.’

Coronavirus has so far killed nearly 1,800 people in the UK and infected more than 25,000
It comes days after the British Government banned companies from buying up drugs used on intensive care wards and selling them to hospitals in other countries.
The Department of Health has announced that the exporting of certain drugs including painkillers, antibiotics and anaesthetics will no longer be allowed.
This ban on international sale of the drugs is intended to shore up Britain’s supplies of drugs which are crucial for treating intensive care patients.
Increasing numbers of people will need to be admitted to critical care units in the coming weeks and the Government must move to make sure they can be looked after.
Although bed capacity is an issue, banning the drugs is one way hospitals can make sure their supplies don’t run dry.
81 drugs were banned from export today, among them the high-grade painkillers morphine, fentanyl and ketamine, as well as the surgical anaesthetics propofol.
Noradrenalin, a type of adrenaline, and the antibiotic clarithromycin, which is a first-choice treatment for pneumonia, were also on the list.
The Department of Health said all the drugs on the list are in high demand across Europe as health authorities work to battle coronavirus.
The Department of Health’s move is a ban on what’s called the parallel export of drugs, meaning companies are not allowed to buy UK stocks to sell them abroad.
Health Minister Lord Bethell said earlier this month: ‘We are banning the parallel export of more than 80 crucial medicines to protect patients in the UK and help ensure they can always get the treatments they need.’
Also on the parallel export ban list are medications being used as experimental therapies for people with severe coronavirus infections.
Antimalarial drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, as well as HIV medications called lopinavir + ritonavir, are also on the list.
All three have been used on COVID-19 patients by doctors in China, who reported that they have shown good results.
Their status on the protected list raises the prospect of them being used in the UK after Prime Minister Boris Johnson yesterday revealed British patients have begun to be enrolled in clinical trials.
UK waives duties so it can boost import of coronavirus testing kits, ventilators and other vital medical equipment as it faces furious backlash over lagging behind Germany which is testing 500,000 people every week
Britain will waive import taxes on coronavirus testing kits, ventilators and other vital medical supplies in a bid to boost the fight against the deadly disease amid widespread criticism of the government’s testing operation.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced this evening that NHS suppliers will no longer have to pay customs duty and import VAT on specified medical items coming from outside the EU.
It came as Michael Gove admitted the government’s coronavirus testing efforts must go ‘further, faster’ as Downing Street suggested a target of 25,000 daily checks may not be met until the end of next month.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office said the lack of availability of globally in-demand crucial chemicals which are needed in the testing process was proving a ‘critical constraint’ on expanding checks.
Speaking at the daily Downing Street press conference, Mr Gove said: ‘While the rate of testing is increasing we must go further, faster. A critical constraint on the ability to rapidly increase testing capacity is the availability of the chemical reagents which are necessary in the testing.
‘The Prime Minister and the Health Secretary are working with companies worldwide to ensure that we get the material we need to increase tests of all kinds.’
Mr Gove also revealed the first wave of new ventilator devices will roll off the production line this weekend and be delivered to the NHS next week when they will be ‘rapidly distributed to the frontline’.
Meanwhile, the medical director of NHS England Professor Stephen Powis warned that while there are ‘green shoots’ of hope in relation to the spread of coronavirus after an apparent plateau in the number of new cases, the UK must not be ‘complacent’.
‘It is really important not to read too much because it is really early days,’ he said. ‘We are not out of the woods, we are very much in the woods.’
Critics today labelled the UK’s efforts on testing a ‘catastrophe’ and ‘dismal’ when compared to what is being done in Germany where 500,000 tests are being carried out every week.

Rishi Sunak today announced that he is waiving import duty on medical supplies like coronavirus testing kits
Downing Street had earlier hinted at Mr Johnson’s apparent frustration at the slow progress on ramping up Britain’s capacity, with a spokesman saying he wanted ‘as much progress to be made on this as possible’.
The UK is currently managing just under 10,000 tests a day with the government having previously said it wants to get to 25,000 by the middle of April.
But today Number 10 said the timetable was ‘mid to late April’ – seemingly an admission that efforts have stalled.
Experts have insisted ‘organisation’ rather than a shortage of facilities is to blame for the painfully slow rise in checks.
However, the UK is struggling to obtain enough of the tests themselves, with Germany seemingly able to acquire them from domestic manufacturers while Britain is having to import them.
The competition for the tests was illustrated today by reports NHS England and NHS Wales ended up bidding against each other for equipment at the end of last week, prompting the four Home Nations to agree that all procurement will be done in Whitehall.
It is hoped that the Chancellor’s decision to waive customs duty and import VAT on key medical supplies will make it easier to ship in the tests.
Mr Sunak said: ‘We are taking decisive action to ensure our NHS has everything it needs to fight this outbreak.
‘Waiving import taxes on vital medical equipment such as ventilators will speed up and increase the supply of critical items going to our frontline health workers.’
However, the government will have to dramatically increase its efforts if it is to win over its critics who today slammed ministers for not doing enough.
Jeremy Hunt, the Tory chairman of the Health Select Committee, said it would be ‘very worrying’ if the UK chose not to follow the lead of the likes of Germany and South Korea.
He said mass testing allows for ‘a lot less’ disruption to daily lives because those who have the disease can be isolated and prevented from passing the virus on.
He said: ‘It is internationally proven as the most effective way of breaking the chain of transmission.
‘So however difficult it is to source the reagents, to ramp up the capacity of laboratories up and down the country, it is essential that mass community testing is part of our national strategy.’
Nigel Farage, the leader of the Brexit Party, labelled the UK’s testing efforts a ‘catastrophe’, telling MailOnline: ‘It’s an embarrassment. We do not appear to have done anything in six weeks to get ourselves in a better position on this.
‘If I was an NHS frontline worker waiting week after week after week for this I would be furious.’
He added: ‘70,000 tests a day in Germany, a million tests now conducted in America, and we in six weeks have managed to do as many tests as the Germans do in two days.
‘Everybody wants to believe in their leader during a crisis and everyone has given Boris the benefit of the doubt… I think public opinion is beginning to ask very serious questions.’
Scottish entrepreneur Duncan Bannatyne told MailOnline that the government’s ‘dismal’ handling of the testing crisis will send vast numbers of British businesses to the wall – and delay the country’s economic recovery.
The gym mogul and former Dragons’ Den star said: ‘The government must get on top of testing immediately. The longer we are in lockdown the more businesses will go bust.
‘My business hands over £39million to the Government every year in VAT, PAYE and corporation tax. As long as we are closed they get nothing.
‘Their handling of the testing issue has been dismal to say the least.’
Meanwhile, Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh’s Medical School, suggested the UK was struggling to ramp up testing because of the strategy it had earlier adopted to the outbreak.
She tweeted that she feared the government had given up ‘on containment too early’ due an apparent belief that most people in the UK would eventually get the disease.
That resulted in ‘planning and preparing for unprecedented testing’ being ‘taken off the table’ which Ms Sridhar said she believed was the ‘wrong path’.
Germany has been conducting 500,000 tests a week and is aiming to hit 200,000 tests a day in the near future.
Part of the difference between the UK and Germany is reportedly that the latter has more tests available domestically.
There are also claims that a shipment of testing kit parts from the European mainland has been found to be contaminated with the virus, in another potential delay.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps admitted this morning that the government was struggling with the logistical challenge of increasing testing, saying it was not a ‘trivial or straightforward’ task.
‘This is never going to be enough,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. ‘We always need to be pushing.’
Ministers boasted on Sunday that they had reached a target of 10,000 tests a day.
However, while the capacity had been reached, the government is yet to actually carry out that number. The latest figures from Public Health England were 8,278 in the 24 hours to 9am on Sunday, which was actually down from 9,114 the previous day.
Professor Anthony Costello, an ex-director of the World Health Organisation (WHO) who is now based at University College London, this morning dismissed the idea that the UK does not have enough laboratory facilities to process tests.
‘We need a policy of mass community testing as well as the blunt instrument of social distancing,’ he told the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme.
‘We need to do that because we want to arrow in on detecting cases and contact and quarantine. We need to have enough tests to protect our health workers…
‘But most important when we want to loosen up the lockdown we want to have control over that.
‘There will be much less disruption if we can do that rather than isolating the entire economy.’
He went on: ‘In answer to can we do it, we have 44 molecular virology labs in the UK.
‘If they were doing 400 tests a day we would be up to Germany levels of testing and that is perfectly feasible.
Asked whether he was saying that the UK has the capacity but is just not organising it properly, Prof Costello said: ‘Yeah, correct. I don’t see why we cannot get these 44 molecular virology labs up and running, finding the cases and testing.
‘PHE were slow and controlled, and they only allowed non-PHE labs to start testing two weeks ago. But that was after the strategy shift to stopping community tests.
‘We need to be like Korea…. their death rate is three per million and they have suppressed the virus.’
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has praised countries like South Korea have for their wide-scale testing regimes, which have helped limit cases.
However, the UK shelved efforts to test everyone with symptoms on March 12, when Britain’s response moved into a ‘delay’ phase.
Instead people who thought they had the illness were urged to self-isolate unless their conditions became so severe they needed medical help.
Amid criticism, Mr Johnson then declared just under a fortnight ago that there would be a big expansion of tests from under 5,000 a day to 25,000.
Routine testing is only just being offered to NHS staff, with 800 per day expected to get access to tests. There are fears that many will have been put at risk, amid complaints that they do not even have enough personal protection kit.
A global shortage of the chemicals needed to produce coronavirus tests has emerged as another setback in the UK’s plans to test more people.
Industry bosses say chemical reagents that are used in the test are in short supply around the world as countries have scrambled to test their citizens for COVID-19.
Lab tests for the coronavirus work by regrowing a patient’s DNA in a lab and examining it to find traces of genetic material left behind by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
For this to work, technicians need a chemical called a reagent to trigger the chemical reaction which starts the process.
There are various types of reagents which can be used in a COVID-19 test, supplied by different companies around the world, but they are in high demand everywhere. They are not unique to coronavirus and are the same reagents used in tests for illnesses such as flu.
The US has 10 different types of reagent listed in the priority list by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It is not clear whether the UK is using reagents manufactured on home soil or importing them.
Some NHS labs have now resorted to make their own in ‘home brew’ situations so they can test patients, The Times reported.
Germany has also been leading the way on testing for individuals who have already been through the virus and emerged with immunity. Such checks could potentially allow people to be issued with certificates saying they are safe to go back to work – easing the lockdown crippling the economy.
The UK government has ordered 17.5million ‘antibody’ tests, but they have yet to go through clinical trials and it is not clear when they can start being used.
A study due to start in Germany in mid-April will see the blood of more than 100,000 volunteers tested for Covid-19 antibodies.
The process will be repeated at regular intervals, with the sample scaling up to track the progress of the epidemic.
Shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth said: ‘Germany appears to be leading the way in the testing and we have much to learn from their approach.
‘I’ve repeatedly called for more testing and contact tracing in the UK, and we should be looking at initiatives like this closely.’
The scale of the problem facing the UK was underlined today with figures suggesting the death toll from the coronavirus outbreak could be 24 per cent higher than NHS figures show.
Patients who had COVID-19 mentioned on their death certificates numbered 210 in England and Wales up to March 20, the Office for National Statistics revealed.
That was 24 per cent higher than the 170 deaths recorded by NHS England and Public Health Wales during the same time frame.
If the ratio has stayed true since that time, the true current number of fatalities could be around 1,739 instead of the official 1,408.
Michael Gove admits the UK must go ‘further, faster’ to increase its coronavirus testing operation after government admits it may not hit 25,000 a day target until end of next month
Michael Gove today admitted the government’s coronavirus testing operation must go ‘further, faster’ after Downing Street suggested a target of 25,000 daily checks may not be met until the end of next month.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office said the lack of availability of crucial chemicals which are needed in the testing process was a ‘critical constraint’ on the UK’s efforts.
He said Boris Johnson and the Health Secretary Matt Hancock were now working together to try to source the globally in-demand material that Britain needs.
Speaking at the daily Downing Street press conference, Mr Gove said: ‘While the rate of testing is increasing we must go further, faster. A critical constraint on the ability to rapidly increase testing capacity is the availability of the chemical reagents which are necessary in the testing.
‘The Prime Minister and the Health Secretary are working with companies worldwide to ensure that we get the material we need to increase tests of all kinds.’
Critics today labelled the UK’s efforts a ‘catastrophe’ and ‘dismal’ when compared to what is being done in Germany where 500,000 tests are being carried out every week.
Downing Street had earlier hinted at Mr Johnsons’s apparent frustration at the slow progress on ramping up Britain’s capacity, with a spokesman saying he wants ‘as much progress to be made on this as possible’.
The UK is currently managing just under 10,000 tests a day with the government having previously said it wants to get to 25,000 by the middle of April.
But today Number 10 said the timetable was ‘mid to late April’ – seemingly an admission that efforts have stalled.
Politicians from different parties are now lining up to criticise the government’s approach while business chiefs are doing the same.
Jeremy Hunt, the Tory former health secretary, said mass testing in the community must be carried out by the government while Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage said the efforts so far were an ’embarrassment’.
Scottish entrepreneur Duncan Bannatyne told MailOnline the government’s ‘dismal’ handling of the testing crisis will send vast numbers of British businesses to the wall – and delay the country’s economic recovery.
Experts have insisted ‘organisation’ rather than a shortage of facilities is to blame for the painfully slow rise in checks.
However, there are also suggestions that the UK is struggling to obtain enough of the tests themselves, with Germany seemingly able to acquire them from domestic manufacturers while Britain is having to import them.
It came amid reports that NHS England and NHS Wales ended up bidding against each other for testing equipment at the end of last week, prompting the four Home Nations to agree that all procurement will be done in Whitehall.

Michael Gove today said the UK must go ‘further, faster’ in ramping up its coronavirus testing efforts

A nurse takes a swab from an NHS worker at a testing facility in Chessington yesterday
Germany has been conducting 500,000 tests a week and is aiming to hit 200,000 tests a day in the near future.
Part of the difference between the UK and Germany is reportedly that the latter has more tests available domestically.
There are also claims that a shipment of testing kit parts from the European mainland has been found to be contaminated with the virus, in another potential delay.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps admitted this morning that the government was struggling with the logistical challenge of increasing testing, saying it was not a ‘trivial or straightforward’ task.
‘This is never going to be enough,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. We always need to be pushing.’
Ministers boasted on Sunday that they had reached a target of 10,000 tests a day.
However, while the capacity has been reached, the government has yet to actually carry out that number. The latest figures from Public Health England were 8,278 in the 24 hours to 9am on Sunday, which was actually down from 9,114 the previous day.
The numbers have sparked widespread concerns about the UK approach to testing.
Mr Hunt, the chairman of the Health Select Committee, said it would be ‘very worrying’ if the UK chose not to follow the lead of the likes of Germany and South Korea.
He said mass testing allows for ‘a lot less’ disruption to daily lives because those who have the disease can be isolated and prevented from passing the virus on.
He said: ‘It is internationally proven as the most effective way of breaking the chain of transmission.
‘So however difficult it is to source the reagents, to ramp up the capacity of laboratories up and down the country, it is essential that mass community testing is part of our national strategy.’
Mr Farage told MailOnline: ‘Testing is a catastrophe. It’s an embarrassment. We do not appear to have done anything in six weeks to get ourselves in a better position on this.
‘If I was an NHS frontline worker waiting week after week after week for this I would be furious.’
He added: ‘70,000 tests a day in Germany, a million tests now conducted in America, and we in six weeks have managed to do as many tests as the Germans do in two days.
‘Everybody wants to believe in their leader during a crisis and everyone has given Boris the benefit of the doubt… I think public opinion is beginning to ask very serious questions.’
Scottish entrepreneur Duncan Bannatyne told MailOnline that the government’s ‘dismal’ handling of the testing crisis will send vast numbers of British businesses to the wall – and delay the country’s economic recovery.
The gym mogul and former Dragons’ Den star said: ‘The Government must get on top of testing immediately. The longer we are in lockdown the more businesses will go bust.
‘My business hands over £39million to the Government every year in VAT, PAYE and corporation tax. As long as we are closed they get nothing.
‘Their handling of the testing issue has been dismal to say the least.’
Professor Anthony Costello, an ex-director of the World Health Organisation (WHO) who is now based at University College London, dismissed the idea that the UK does not have enough laboratory facilities to process the tests.
‘We need a policy of mass community testing as well as the blunt instrument of social distancing,’ he told the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme.
‘We need to do that because we want to arrow in on detecting cases and contact and quarantine. We need to have enough tests to protect our health workers…
‘But most important when we want to loosen up the lockdown we want to have control over that.
‘There will be much less disruption if we can do that rather than isolating the entire economy.’
He went on: ‘In answer to can we do it, we have 44 molecular virology labs in the UK.
‘If they were doing 400 tests a day we would be up to Germany levels of testing and that is perfectly feasible.
Asked whether he was saying that the UK has the capacity but is just not organising it properly, Prof Costello said: ‘Yeah, correct. I don’t see why we cannot get these 44 molecular virology labs up and running, finding the cases and testing.
‘PHE were slow and controlled, and they only allowed non-PHE labs to start testing two weeks ago. But that was after the strategy shift to stopping community tests.
‘We need to be like Korea…. their death rate is three per million and they have suppressed the virus.’
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has praised countries like South Korea have for their wide-scale testing regimes, which have helped limit cases.
However, the UK shelved efforts to test everyone with symptoms on March 12, when Britain’s response moved into a ‘delay’ phase.
Instead people who thought they had the illness were urged to self-isolate unless their conditions became so severe they needed medical help.
Amid criticism, Mr Johnson then declared just under a fortnight ago that there would be a big expansion of tests from under 5,000 a day to 25,000.
Routine testing is only just being offered to NHS staff, with 800 per day expected to get access to tests. There are fears that many will have been put at risk, amid complaints that they do not even have enough personal protection kit.
A global shortage of the chemicals needed to produce coronavirus tests has emerged as another setback in the UK’s plans to test more people.
Industry bosses say chemical reagents that are used in the test are in short supply around the world as countries have scrambled to test their citizens for COVID-19.
Lab tests for the coronavirus work by regrowing a patient’s DNA in a lab and examining it to find traces of genetic material left behind by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
For this to work, technicians need a chemical called a reagent to trigger the chemical reaction which starts the process.
There are various types of reagents which can be used in a COVID-19 test, supplied by different companies around the world, but they are in high demand everywhere. They are not unique to coronavirus and are the same reagents used in tests for illnesses such as flu.
The US has 10 different types of reagent listed in the priority list by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It is not clear whether the UK is using reagents manufactured on home soil or importing them.
Some NHS labs have now resorted to make their own in ‘home brew’ situations so they can test patients, The Times reported.
Germany has also been leading the way on testing for individuals who have already been through the virus and emerged with immunity. Such checks could potentially allow people to be issued with certificates saying they are safe to go back to work – easing the lockdown crippling the economy.
The UK government has ordered 17.5million ‘antibody’ tests, but they have yet to go through clinical trials and it is not clear when they can start being used.
A study due to start in Germany in mid-April will see the blood of more than 100,000 volunteers tested for Covid-19 antibodies.
The process will be repeated at regular intervals, with the sample scaling up to track the progress of the epidemic.
Shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth said: ‘Germany appears to be leading the way in the testing and we have much to learn from their approach.
‘I’ve repeatedly called for more testing and contact tracing in the UK, and we should be looking at initiatives like this closely.’
The scale of the problem facing the UK was underlined today with figures suggesting the death toll from the coronavirus outbreak could be 24 per cent higher than NHS figures show.
Patients who had COVID-19 mentioned on their death certificates numbered 210 in England and Wales up to March 20, the Office for National Statistics revealed.
That was 24 per cent higher than the 170 deaths recorded by NHS England and Public Health Wales during the same time frame.
If the ratio has stayed true since that time, the true current number of fatalities could be around 1,739 instead of the official 1,408.
Lord Hague today warned Mr Johnson he must show UK businesses a ‘way out’ of the coronavirus crisis by the end of April – or risk thousands of firms permanently closing their doors.
Lord Hague said many businesses will choose to shut down if they are not given ‘hope’ in the form of a government plan for what will happen after the current state of lockdown ends.
The former foreign secretary said the government’s blueprint for recovery must include a ‘massive and compulsory’ testing programme so the UK is better able to withstand future outbreaks of the deadly disease.
He said the ability to test and trace people in the way that South Korea has been doing will be key because it will give ministers the ability to contain the spread and allow businesses to stay open.
The ex-Tory leader said a failure to pursue massive testing capacity would likely result in the UK facing an economic depression rather than just a recession. And he called for one minister to be put in charge of overseeing the development of the future action plan so they are not distracted by day-to-day events.