Welsh father tells Covid Inquiry of tragic errors that led to the death of his daughter, 25

Martin Shipton

A Welsh police officer has told the UK Covid Inquiry about the tragic mistakes he believes were responsible for the heartbreaking loss of his 25 year-old daughter to the virus.

Lauren Jones, who worked as an administrative assistant in a doctors’ practice, lived with her parents in Rhondda. Her father Paul is a sergeant with South Wales Police and his wife Karen manages the surgery where Lauren worked.

Mr Jones appeared at the Inquiry as one of three relatives of people who died from Covid-19, all of whom gave evidence about the impact of the pandemic on their families.

He said that during lockdown he had continued to work and followed strict social distancing rules in the police station. However, when the team he belonged to needed to attend a briefing about the execution of a firearms warrant, they met in a room where social distancing was impossible and they stood shoulder to shoulder.

Subsequently a number of officers became ill with Covid, including Mr Jones and his wife Karen. When initially all three took Covid tests, Mr and Mrs Jones were positive, while Lauren tested negative.

The couple got better and the three celebrated Christmas together, but on December 27 2020, Lauren felt ill and was driven by Mr Jones to the Royal Glamorgan Hospital, where she was admitted. He assumed she would be allowed home later.

But he told the Inquiry: “We had a phone call later on that evening to say that Lauren wasn’t very well and that she’d been admitted to the Covid ward.”

Text message

He wasn’t able to speak to her, but the following day he had a text message from Lauren, who said she was doing OK and had initially been on a CPAP mask. It had been taken off after a few hours, but the medical staff had to wake her to put it back on because her oxygen levels were dropping.

Mr Jones said: “I knew she wasn’t well … but not for one minute did I think there’d be any problem. I thought she was in the best place, in hospital, having the best treatment, and that she’d be home soon.

“On the Sunday night … I had a conversation with one of the doctors who said there was potentially some trial medication that they could possibly give her to help her. I was ready to speak about it then, but they said there was no rush to speak about it, and they’d speak about it tomorrow, on Monday the 28th. Unfortunately that conversation never took place. I was never told anything about any trial medication on the following day,”

On the Monday night, December 28, Mr and Mrs Jones were told that Lauren was transferred to intensive care: “We were told that she wasn’t doing too well and that she needed to be put on a ventilator. They told me it would be happening that evening or late that night. They said there won’t be a problem, because I asked if I should phone for an update in a few hours, and they said there’s no need, she’ll be OK, she’ll be well looked after. Give us a ring in the morning and we’ll update you on her progress. We were never offered an opportunity to speak to Lauren.”

The next morning, Mr Jones rang the hospital and was told Lauren was still on CPAP. He said: “That came as quite a shock to us really, because they’d been convincing that they would put her on a ventilator. They didn’t give any indication – they just said they hadn’t had to put her on a ventilator. I took it that she’d turned a corner and that she was starting to make a recovery.”

Critical 

Later Mr Jones was told that Lauren was critical but stable: “That again surprised me – the fact that they didn’t ventilate her the night before.

“At around 4.45 that evening we had another call, saying they’d had to ventilate Lauren at about 4.30, which came as a real shock to us because we’d had no communication as to how she’s gone downhill so quickly that she needed a ventilator at that particular time.”

That same evening, at around 8pm, Mr Jones got another call from the hospital saying the ventilator didn’t seem to be working too well for Lauren. They would be giving Lauren what is known as ECMO treatment [a life-support treatment that uses a machine to help a patient’s heart and lungs when they are too weak or sick to function on their own].

Mr Jones said: “I was told that an ECMO team would be travelling down from London, because that’s where the only ECMO bed was. I was told they’d be putting her on the ECMO machine at Royal Glamorgan Hospital, and then she’d be transported to London, where she’d be on the full ECMO treatment.”

He was told that Lauren would be on ECMO for three to seven days, and that it was a tremendous treatment that would help her.

Consultant

But at 11pm that night Mr Jones had a call from an ECMO consultant in London, who said there were no beds available in the ECMO centre in London, and the only bed available was in Leicester at the time. However, a decision had been taken that Lauren would not be a candidate for ECMO.

Mr Jones said: “They mentioned that because of Lauren’s weight, they probably wouldn’t be able to get a line into her groin. I didn’t think that was the case, I’ve got to be honest..”

At that point the consultant said Lauren was unlikely to survive the night.

Mr Jones said: “I’ll never forget those words. I pretty much ended the call and we went down to Royal Glam. And we were going to go in to see her whatever happened.”

The hospital staff didn’t seem to be aware that a decision had been taken not to give Lauren ECMO treatment. “There was certainly some miscommunication there,” he said.

The consultant who had been overseeing Lauren’s treatment told Mr and Mrs Jones they had done everything they could for Lauren and that she wouldn’t survive the night. Mr Jones said: “Personally I didn’t think they’d done everything they could, because I think the ECMO treatment should have been made available to her.”

Asked what the tone of the consultant had been, Mr Jones said: “It was almost as if it was the normal thing for a 25 year-old to lose their life to Covid.”

Lung damage

Mr Jones said he was told by the consultant that because Lauren had been on 100% oxygen, damage had been done to her lungs: “They said that she’d been on high pressure oxygen to try to get her blood oxygen level up,” he said. “That would have caused significant damage to her lungs potentially. There weren’t any other options for treatment, unfortunately. We sat down beside Lauren and they told us we’d have to decide when to switch her life support off.”

Having switched off the ventilator, Lauren passed away at 4.04 on the morning of December 30.

When they were leaving the hospital, Mr and Mrs Jones were given Lauren’s belongings in two sealed plastic bags and told not to open them for 10 days. When they did, the shoes she had been wearing were missing: “Subsequently I made efforts with the hospital to find them, because they were of sentimental value to us, but they never found them,” said Mr Jones. “And they’d put in a T-shirt that Lauren was wearing at the time when I’m guessing they would have had to ventilate her. The T-shirt had obviously been ripped or cut at the middle for them to be able to do whatever they had to do at the time. Not at any time had we been told that anything like that had happened. It was clear that something had gone very wrong at some point. I’m guessing they maybe had to do an emergency ventilation.

“I’ve read through Lauren’s medical notes and had meetings with the doctors, because I just wasn’t happy with what had happened.”

The medical notes showed that when he had asked why Lauren wasn’t going to be ventilated on December 28, he was told that her oxygen saturation levels were better than originally thought, so she didn’t need to be ventilated. Mr Jones added: “They also told me that it was Lauren’s decision not to be ventilated, which again I found strange, because if it was the best option for her, then maybe they should have involved myself and Karen in a discussion with Lauren, and maybe we could have suggested that she went on a ventilator to help her.”

Ventilated

In fact, when Lauren was ventilated on December 29, her oxygen saturation levels were at the life threatening level of just 10%.

Mr Jones said a nurse had told him and his wife that Lauren had nearly been lost at that point: “They told us that when we were actually sitting by her bedside before we made the decision to switch her ventilator off. It was almost a passing comment. It really took us aback, because that wasn’t mentioned at any time, either during the phone call at 4.45 or the phone call at 8.”

Mr Jones said he thought Lauren was left to “struggle and suffer” on CPAP: “From what I’ve been told and from reading her [medical] notes, she was struggling to breathe before she was ventilated.”

He later found out that someone much older than Lauren who had been on the same Cobid ward and had been ventilated the night Lauren was originally due to be ventilated, survived and has made a full recovery.

Asked to describe his experience with the health service around Lauren’s critical illness with Covid-19, Mr Jones said:”Our experience was just shocking – really poor communication. Decisions made that we certainly weren’t consulted with. Decisions that should probably have involved a conversation with Lauren as well. Maybe even the chance to speak to Lauren at some time – or a text message to her – would have been helpful. But we had absolutely no communication whatsoever, which was really poor. It was a terrible experience.”

Asked how the loss of Lauren had impacted his and his wife’s lives, Mr Jones said: “It’s left a huge hole in our lives – the lives of our family. Lauren was a gift to us. We’d lost a child about a year and a half before we had Lauren, through something totally different during pregnancy. We had to go through genetic testing. Lauren was our gift and it’s left a massive hole in our lives and something we’ll never fill again. To see that empty seat in our house every day is a constant reminder of how the pandemic has affected us.”

Grief

Thanking Mr Jones for his evidence, Inquiry Chair Baroness Heather Hallett said: “As a parent I can’t imagine the grief that you and your wife are suffering. I hope that you’ve understood just how grateful we are for you to come along and explain what’s happened to you. One of the reasons it’s so important is not merely the impact on the bereaved, which obviously is exceedingly important, but there are also still some who think that the Covid pandemic only affected those who were older or had other conditions. What your evidence does – your awful, tragic experience – reminds us that it wasn’t just those who were older and those who had other conditions. Thank you for coming, and let’s hope you can find a way to come to terms with that huge hole.”