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

The number of patients forced to sleep alongside the opposite sex in NHS wards has tripled since pre-pandemic times, despite the UK government banning mixed-sex wards in 2010. Recent official data shows the rule has been broken over 25,000 times in the past six months. The figure for March 2022 alone stands at 4,475, more than three times the number recorded in March 2019.