Britain is facing a shortage of the gowns required to protect medical staff against coronavirus, with NHS hospitals resorting to flying in their own stocks from China.

Senior health officials disclosed that major NHS hospitals have been forced to try to source protective equipment from China and commission flights back to the UK in an attempt to boost their supplies.

The disclosures emerged alongside a new Government plan to tackle dangerously low supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE), with any company that can produce such kit now asked to sign up.

The strategy says that current NHS stocks are propped up by donations of 1.2 million goggles and masks from companies such as B&Q. On Saturday, the Health Secretary announced that 19 healthcare workers had died after contracting coronavirus, after he came under fire for the failure to provide sufficient equipment.

The medical workers include a consultant who had appealed to the Prime Minister about a lack of PPE days before he was admitted to hospital. The figure later appeared to rise after it emerged that two porters who worked at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford had died, along with a nurse from Cardiff and two others from Worcestershire and London.