THERE are no PPE shortages at Basingstoke Hospital, the chief executive of Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has said.

Alex Whitfield said that after a "tight" period in the "early days" of the virus, PPE levels are now substantial across the trust's three sites.

Now, the national mechanism for delivering the equipment to hospitals, where batches are "pushed" out to hospitals regularly without them ordering it, are up and running and working "really well".

"Currently we haven’t got any shortages, we haven’t at any point run out and got to the stage where staff had to do things they were uncomfortable with because we run out of PPE.

"We were a bit tight in the early days, but now it is working really well and the deliveries are arriving on time, and we’ve got plenty of PPE.

"A couple of weeks ago we were getting deliveries on the day we would have run out. It was a ‘just in time’ delivery mechanism.

"Staff absolutely have the right PPE and the right guidance from PHE to follow and we’ve been following that all the way along. I think it’s an anxious time for everybody, even with PPE."

On Friday, health secretary Matt Hancock announced that these push deliveries will increase from once every 72 hours to daily.

It comes after the voluntary sector have had to come to the rescue in many places across the country.

In Basingstoke, schools and businesses have donated supplies to the hospital, including the Costello, who made a number of plastic face shields.

Brighton Hill Community School have also donated more than 100 goggles from their science labs to NHS staff.

"We’ve had amazing support from the community," Ms Whitfield continued. "We’ve had people 3D printing masks and visors.

"I went around to one of our teams this morning and the receptionist was putting together the masks, so people are doing all sorts of things.

"We’ve got people making up scrubs for us so we don’t run out of those, all of that is helping, but the national process is working as well to get us what we need."

However, whilst the situation may be in hand now, the chief executive warned that should the number of patients at hospital increase, they will need more PPE.

"We’re looking at the modelling and the numbers all the time and absolutely if we have more patients in hospital then we will need PPE.

"We’re absolutely assured that the central stock is there and the distribution processes going on now will carry on and work in the coming weeks.

"I think they stockpiled a lot for pandemic flu so there’s some of that in a warehouse."