A delivery of 84 tonnes of personal protective equipment for NHS staff, including 400,000 gowns, has been delayed.

The consignment, from Turkey, had been due to arrive in the UK today.

Stocks are reaching crisis levels in some hospitals after ministers admitted they could not guarantee supplies would last the weekend.

Doctors’ leaders today accused the government of missed opportunities to stockpile PPE, as ministers confirmed Britain sent a quarter of a million items to China in February.

Unions have called on health secretary Matt Hancock to consider his position amid warning staff could walk out rather than put their lives at risk by working without proper equipment.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chairman of the British Medical Association council, said doctors are “extremely worried” that they do not have adequate protection.

He said the government was warned last weekend that there were “critically low shortages of full-length gowns”.

He added: “At the beginning of the pandemic we were assured that we had sufficient stockpiles... and we believed that we were well catered for.

“We then heard that the issues were about operational deliveries,” he added, stating that deliveries had been the cause of lack of supplies to the frontline.

“We’re not being given clear information,” he said.

Michael Gove, the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, later confirmed that the UK had sent 273,000 items of PPE to Wuhan province in China, where the outbreak started, earlier this year.

Mr Gove told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: “I think it’s important to stress… the personal protection equipment that we sent to China was to help with the most extreme outbreak in Wuhan.

“That personal protection equipment was not from our pandemic stock.

“Also we have received far more from China in personal protective equipment than we have given.

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As anger over a lack of PPE grew on Saturday, Robert Jenrick, the communities secretary, stressed that a large consignment, including 400,000 gowns, was due to arrive in the UK from Turkey on Sunday.

He also admitted ministers had “got to do more” to get protective kit to NHS staff.

Standing beside Mr Jenrick at the Downing Street daily press conference Professor Stephen Powis, the medical director of NHS England, made a plea on behalf of NHS staff.

He said he knew ministers were working “incredibly hard”, but he added: “What I hear from my clinical colleagues is that what they need is PPE delivered to the frontline.”

In a significant shift, doctors and nurses have been asked, where necessary, to treat patients without wearing full-length waterproof gowns and even use plastic aprons as an alternative.