Breaches of single-sex hospital ward rules more than treble since pandemic

New figures show that the number of patients in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) sleeping on mixed-sex wards has increased more than 25,000 times in the six months to March. The strict rule on same-sex wards has been breached increasingly since it was temporarily suspended due to pandemic pressures. This issue has tripled since March 2019 with every month since December 2021 recording over 4,000 breaches.