The UK Government has admitted to counting the amount of PPE gloves it has in stock in a misleading way.
The Daily Mirror reports how Downing Street sometimes counts an individual glove as two - meaning that an order for 100 gloves would actually only be 50 pairs.
It comes after BBC documentary Panorama exposed the PPE scandal claiming that counting gloves individually made government PPE figures seem bigger than they actually are.
The investigation also found that vital items were left out of the stockpile when it was set up in 2009, and that the government subsequently ignored a warning from its own advisers to buy missing equipment.
There were no gowns, visors, swabs or body bags in the government's pandemic stockpile when COVID-19 reached the UK.
The BBC say that NHS doctors and nurses are complaining that there are also shortages of life-saving FFP3 respirator masks.
Panorama discovered that millions of FFP3 respirator masks are unaccounted for.
Speaking about the glove issue, a government spokesperson admitted that while it is not always the case, they do sometimes count gloves individually rather than as a pair.
It’s not even that simple I'm afraid," the Prime Minister's official spokesman said
"Gloves are counted differently depending on clinical settings."
The spokesman added: "Sometimes they’re single, sometimes they’re pairs, and often they’re counted as fours in high-risk areas.
"It’s not correct to say they’re all counted individually - they’re counted in a number of different ways."
You can watch the full Panorama programme, Has the Government Failed the NHS? on iPlayer here.
