In light of the recent Covid-19 Inquiry report, a then contact tracer volunteer recalls her personal experience on how the community stepped in where formal pandemic support fell short.

Judy Stewart, 78, a retired Health Promotion Specialist, was a community contact tracer from April 2020 during the early stages of the pandemic; also helping organise community PPE and mask production for Sheffield care homes and NHS staff.

She was part of a wider volunteer community initiative, Sheffield Community Contact Tracers.

During her involvement, the initiative evolved and her role grew from contacting affected individuals, to making and distributing masks to providing ‘shopping on doorsteps’ for those isolating.

Stewart said that due to the limited availability of PPE, volunteers ‘produced thousands of masks’ from local donations using ‘old sheets or duvet covers…anything to make masks and scrubs’,

The mask’s effectiveness was assessed by available information at the time; they ‘had to work with what we had.’

Stewart spoke on the limited national guidance on protection.

She stated: “Hospital staff didn’t know the details of how long they might need to isolate and how they could do it in families, so we were helping them there as well.

“There was general ignorance everywhere… no understanding of what didn’t work.”

Stewart emphasised that ‘nurses were wearing PPE in hospital when patients were coming in’ but within communal spaces, where ‘they were chatting with coffee’, they didn’t wear PPE.

National isolation guidance was not realistic without financial support following it.

She emphasised the financial pressure care home and hospital staff were under to keep working: “Staff were worried about losing their jobs.

“They were not being supported by their managers who themselves were worried about the financial implications of not having staff.

“Hospital staff were being told that they had to come into work anyway, because there was nobody to replace them.”

Stretching outside the care sector, Stewart remembered she once contacted a taxi driver asking if he wanted to know if he had been in contact with someone who might have Covid.

Stewart said: “He didn’t want to know. He was gonna carry on. Why? Because he needed the money.”