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

There’s been a sharp increase in the number of patients being compelled to share NHS wards with the opposite sex, with this rule, prohibiting mixed-sex wards, being violated more than 25,000 times in six months up until March. Despite these wards having been outlawed in 2010, official data shows the rule was flouted almost 4,500 times in March, three times as much as the instances in March 2019.