Known about what since December? Didn’t the first cases only emerge in China right at the end of December? So the UK Government should have immediately in December done what? Ordered a whole load of additional PPE and respirators because a new virus had been identified in a small number of human cases? And before anything was known about how contagious or deadly it might be? Potentially wasting millions for which it would have been thoroughly criticised if it had turned out to be not very contagious/deadly. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.....
You have put into words something that has been on my mind, who is actually responsible for procuring and distributing PPE within the NHS. BTW I'm not anti or pro government.
Also who is responsible for not having enough testing kits, who is to responsible for there not being enough chemicals to make the kits, testing stations, labs to produce results.
None of these things happen overnight.
The WHO did not declare COVID 19 a Pandemic until 11 March --- that's 3 weeks ago.
Note I have asked - who is responsible - not who is to blame....
As RWC says - if the NHS chief of procurement had bought all the PPE stock they could and it not been required - they wouldn't have been criticised - they would have been sacked....