The Health and Safety Executive refused to investigate reports from NHS trusts that 10 frontline staff had died as a result of catching Covid-19 during the pandemic, a Freedom of Information request from the Pharmaceutical Journal has revealed.

The stance has prompted concern that the regulator is too strict in its RIDDOR definition of workplace harm. Prof Raymond Agius, co-chair of the British Medical Association’s occupational medicine committee, said:

“The HSE threshold for RIDDOR reporting, as shown by HSE’s guidance and its correspondence with employers [trusts], is too high. It does not take into account the increased risk health and care staff face simply by sharing the same environment as patients, even if they aren’t directly clinically treating those who are known to be Covid-positive.”

The HSE declined to look into at least 89 dangerous incidents that NHS trusts said involved healthcare workers being exposed to Covid, including 10 deaths.

173 trusts in England submitted at least 6,007 reports about employees’ exposure to Covid-19 in the course of their duties to the HSE between 30 January 2020 and 11 March 2022, under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR).

They included 213 “dangerous occurrences”, which are incidents that have the potential to cause significant harm; 5,753 cases where a staff member had caught Covid-19; and 41 deaths among people who had been exposed to the disease at their workplace.

The HSE refused to look into five Covid deaths reported under the RIDDOR scheme by the Yorkshire ambulance service (YAS) because of what it considered a lack of evidence.

YAS’s response to Pharmaceutical Journal:

“HSE maintained that the occupational exposure of Covid-19 could not be clearly linked to the workplace as community cases were also highly prevalent at the time”.

The regulator also decided not to look into the Covid deaths of five staff at University College London Hospital.

“The HSE found that there was no reasonable evidence that the infection was contracted at work,” a trust spokesperson told Pharmaceutical Journal.

Prof Raymond Agius, co-chair of the British Medical Association’s occupational medicine committee, said:

“The HSE threshold for RIDDOR reporting, as shown by HSE’s guidance and its correspondence with employers [trusts], is too high. It does not take into account the increased risk health and care staff face simply by sharing the same environment as patients, even if they aren’t directly clinically treating those who are known to be Covid-positive.”