Covid-19: Doctors’ call for legal protection against claims of unlawful killing is rejected

England’s health and social care secretary has rejected a call to bring in emergency legislation to protect doctors from “inappropriate” legal action amid fears that the NHS will be overwhelmed by the covid-19 pandemic.

Doctors are worried not only that they will be forced to choose which patients should live and which should die but that they could be vulnerable to a criminal investigation by police.

In November the prime minister, Boris Johnson, warned that if the NHS were overwhelmed the country could face a “medical and moral disaster” where doctors and nurses could be “forced to choose which patients to treat, who would live and who would die.” In an official briefing on 6 January London’s most senior doctors were told that the capital’s hospitals were less than two weeks from being overwhelmed, and those in other parts of the UK are under similar pressure. For example, the Royal London Hospital has expanded its intensive care unit capacity from 44 to 150 beds, all of which were occupied on 19 January.

Doctors’ organisations …