Recommendation COVID-M5.5: Emergency Healthcare Equipment Plan
From Module 5: Procurement, published 14 July 2026.
Recommendation
UK regulators, including the Health and Safety Executive, the Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland, the Office for Product Safety and Standards and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, should establish an emergency healthcare equipment cross-regulator plan for future pandemics.
The plan must include arrangements for:
coordination of written guidance from regulators to ensure that it is clear, concise and updated when required; and
increasing testing house capacity and the deployment of suitable inspection regimes both to reduce the quantity of non-compliant equipment entering the system and to improve enforcement.
In brief (written by this site)
The Inquiry asked UK regulators to create an emergency healthcare equipment plan for future pandemics. When the Executive Office's publications list was checked in September 2026, the Northern Ireland Executive had not published a response to the Module 5 report of 14 July 2026 (Northern Ireland Executive response, Sep 2026). The Scottish Government had also not published a response to the report when its collection of inquiry responses was checked in September 2026 (Scottish Government response, Sep 2026). Similarly, the Welsh Government had not published a response when its module reports page was checked in September 2026 (Welsh Government response, Sep 2026). The record holds nothing dated later than the response of September 2026 (Welsh Government response, Sep 2026).
Sources
AI-generated summary of the record on this page, checked by a second model and automatic checks, 12 Oct 2026. The record below is the sources' own words.
Government response
No formal government response published. The Welsh Government had not published a response to the Module 5 report of 14 July 2026 when its page of responses to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry module reports on GOV.WALES was checked on 25 September 2026.
No formal government response published. The Scottish Government had not published a response to the Module 5 report of 14 July 2026 when its collection of responses to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry on gov.scot was checked on 25 September 2026.
No formal government response published. The Northern Ireland Executive had not published a response to the Module 5 report of 14 July 2026 when the Executive Office's publications list was checked on 25 September 2026.
Delivery
No statement on delivery from Health and Safety Executive has been found in the sources searched (last checked 20 October 2026). This is separate from the response above.
Responsible bodies
Themes and tags
Who has spoken
- Welsh Government
Response - Scottish Government
Response - Northern Ireland Executive
Response