Professor Anthony McCarthy:

We all need to know there are multiple sides of it. We are all learning and continue to learn. The evidence base will keep changing. We had a recent support meeting in Holles Street hospital about Covid. Our clinical director was describing how when Covid hit in March 2020, he was having to tell staff they must come into work in our beautiful and old, but cramped, building which was designed for 2,000 pregnancies per year but actually has 9,000, while thinking that if Italian figures were to go through that between 35 and 45 of the staff in the hospital would die.

Medical staff often die in pandemics. If one looks at pandemics all over the world, medical, nursing and other staff die. I was past retirement age but I was going into the hospital, as were many others. We were very aware of the risk to ourselves. We were also very aware of the risk to the mothers. We were doing everything possible in our cramped building. The Deputy mentioned there may be another pandemic within ten years. I hope the new national maternity hospital is in St. Vincent's hospital within ten years where we will have single rooms at that stage and will be able to allow dads in.

We were very aware of the safety of the mothers. Can we win? We did not want to give Covid to mothers and we certainly did not want to give Covid to babies. It was pre-vaccines. We were aware of how dangerous it would be in pregnancy for mothers who were not vaccinated. We did not have vaccines yet. We were worried about ourselves in that context but, more important, we were worried about the mothers and the babies. We do not want even more court cases with people suing the hospital for giving Covid to a mother because we did not protect them well enough.

The pandemic has had all sorts of effects. Many mothers and parents missed out. Some were thankful that there would not be loads of husbands, partners, grannies and others and that they would have their own space. Others were delighted to go home and not have family visiting all the time. One has to see the individual and work around that individual.