73 NHS workers at London hospital Great Ormond Street test positive for coronavirus as 318 self-isolate

MORE than 70 NHS workers at a London hospital have tested positive for coronavirus.

Seventy-three workers at Great Ormond Street have been diagnosed as having the bug, with 318 in total off sick.

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Ex-WHO director Anthony Costello tweeted today that he had received an email informing him of the outbreak on April 1.

He said 73 out of 181 staff from Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) had tested positive.

And he added: "An informant tells me 'social distancing in the hospital is a fiction.

"'Whatever the inadequacies of PPE for patient contact my concern is about the use of masks in non-clinical hospital areas. Many team members do handovers in a small office space without the use of masks'."

But Great Ormond Street Hospital insisted they would be able to fully staff their services despite the drop.

A spokesperson said: "We continue to monitor COVID-19 related staff absence carefully which currently equates to 6 per cent of our workforce and are able to fully staff all of the services we have planned to run at this time.”

It comes as it was revealed that at one hospital in the north of England almost half of the A&E's consultants are off sick over the bug.

And fears have continued to grow that NHS workers are not being given the proper PPE gear to keep them safe as they treat coronavirus patients up and down the country.

Top doctors warned that medics treating coronavirus patients on the frontline will die if they don't get proper personal protection equipment (PPE).

The British Medical Association claims that thousands of GPs and hospital staff are still not being provided with the kit they need to protect themselves and those with Covid-19.

And so far, just 2,000 of the NHS's 550,000 staff have been tested for coronavirus with the government under increasing pressure to protect frontline health workers.

Last night it was revealed just 2,000 of Britain's vital foot soldiers have been checked for the killer bug, with Boris Johnson admitting numbers need to be ramped up now.

Thousands of doctors, GPs, nurses and paramedics are stuck in quarantine because they, or someone at at home, has symptoms.

Around 85 per cent could return to work if they knew they weren't carrying the virus.

And it came as a drive-thru testing centre for hero NHS workers at IKEA was hit by chaos with huge queues and staff turned away.

Hundreds of drivers desperate to get back to work could be seen waiting in the store's car park in Wembley, north London yesterday.

Long queues of cars built up at a testing centre set up at Ikea in Wembley, while another at Chessington World of Adventures was all but deserted.

Yet, at both, key workers were told they could not be tested without emails arranging a time and date.

Experts believe up to 200,000 NHS staff currently off work could return if they were tested soon.