To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what plans his Department had to provide personal protective equipment to transport workers during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered on
18 May 2020
Keeping transport workers and passengers safe is of paramount importance. The new guidance for transport operators and passengers that we published on 12 May is designed precisely to help achieve this.
The guidance is clear that when managing the risk of COVID-19, additional PPE beyond what workers usually wear is not beneficial. This is because COVID-19 is a different type of risk to the risks they normally face in a workplace, and needs to be managed through social distancing, good hand hygiene and fixed teams or partnering, not through the use of PPE. We are working closely with transport operators across the sector on the implementation of the guidance.