Nineteen National Health Service (NHS) workers in the United Kingdom have died as a result of coronavirus amidst reports that frontline medical staff lack sufficient supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) to keep them from contracting the Chinese virus.

On Saturday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock denied having knowledge of a link between the deaths of the healthcare workers and a lack of PPE but said that the government will launch an investigation into how the workers became infected with COVID-19.

Mr Hancock said that the country should “pay tribute” to the foreign-born NHS staff who lost their lives but doubled down on his call for medical personnel only to use the appropriate amount of protective equipment, calling it a “precious resource”.

“My heart goes out to their families… the fact that such a high proportion are from people that moved to this country to work for the NHS is really heart-rending… to see people who have literally given their lives for the NHS who were moved here to give that service, and I think we should pay tribute to them,” Hancock told Sky News.

On Friday, the Health Secretary announced a three-point plan to sure up supplies of PPE in hospitals, saying that with the help of the military some 742 million pieces of PPE have already been delivered to hospitals on the frontline of the pandemic.

“There’s enough PPE to go around, but only if it’s used in line with our guidance. We need everyone to treat PPE like the precious resource that it is,” he said in comments reported by ITV.

“That means only using it when there’s a clinical need, and not using more than is needed,” he added.

Medics Who Speak out About Protective Equipment Shortages ‘Threatened’ by Hospitals https://t.co/EchjFCE0Q2 — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 1, 2020

Mr Hancock’s comments on the use of protective equipment drew criticism from leading health officials in the country.

“I take offence actually that we are saying that healthcare workers are abusing or overusing PPE,” the chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, Dame Donna Kinnair, told the BBC.

Kinnair said that nurses were still reporting shortages of PPE, adding that no piece of protective equipment was “more precious a resource than a healthcare worker’s life, a nurse’s life, a doctor’s life”.

The council chairman of the British Medical Association (BMA), Dr Chaand Nagpaul, said that healthcare workers are facing “heart-breaking decisions” as to whether they should continue treating coronavirus patients without sufficient protective equipment.

“This is an immensely difficult position to be in, but is ultimately down to the government’s chronic failure to supply us with the proper equipment,” he added.

The government has maintained that there is no shortage of protective equipment. However, nurses at Northwick Park Hospital shared photos on social media in March showing them wearing bin bags amidst a lack of medical gowns. According to a source speaking to The Telegraph, all three tested positive for coronavirus last week.

On Friday it was announced that 980 people died from coronavirus, surpassing the daily records recorded in Spain and Italy, bringing the total number of deaths in the country to 8,958.

Delingpole: Britain’s Bloated Health Bureaucracy Is Making a Pig’s Ear of This Crisis https://t.co/neMtavkU1T — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 5, 2020

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