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

The rule preventing opposite sexes from being treated on the same NHS wards has been broken 25,000 times in six months, according to NHS data analysed by PA news agency’s RADAR service, a trebling of cases since before the pandemic. Though mixed-sex wards were banned in 2010, the rule was broken almost 4,500 times, over three times the instances recorded in March 2019.