Ambulance workers faced significant delays trying to save dying patients in the pandemic because of the time it took to put on protective equipment, a Covid investigation has told.

Ambulance technician Mark Tilley had tears in his eyes as he described how the experience still “plays on his mind”.

He said, “I bottle things up. I’ve been told many times that I’m cold. I deal with it the way I deal with it.”

During the pandemic, some ambulance workers moved into budget hotels for several weeks to avoid putting family members at risk, he said.

Mr Tilley, who works for the South East Coast Ambulance Service, was giving evidence as a representative of the GMB union.

In January 2021, at the peak of the winter wave of the pandemic, he volunteered, along with 40 colleagues, to visit Sittingbourne in north Kent for three weeks.

A new variant of Covid has recently emerged in the area, which spreads more rapidly and has increased the pressure on hospitals.

He told the inquest that, on one occasion, he had to queue in his ambulance outside A&E for an entire ten-hour shift because there was not enough space in the building to transfer an “extremely deteriorating” patient.

“We ran out of oxygen, so we had to scan the hospital to find (more),” he said. “We ordered pizza in the vehicle because otherwise we would have had nothing to eat.”

Due to lockdown regulations at the time, volunteer ambulance teams were sleeping in a budget hotel, with some choosing not to return home to avoid putting family members at risk.

“You had nowhere to go, so the only amenities there were: television and a phone,” he said.

“You had 12 hours (after your shift) to reflect on what you were seeing; the queues at the hospital, the poor patients.”

In his testimony, Mr. Tilley described arriving at residential homes where patients were dying “inside the front window or on the sidewalk.”

Under the guidance, paramedics and other ambulance crews were told they would have to wait until they arrived at the scene before wearing plastic Tyvek suits and protective hoods or masks.

He said it could take a significant minute and a half before staff were able to begin treatment: “I would usually go over to him and start bouncing up and down on his chest (to perform CPR).

“But (instead) we went and got our masks and suits and all that – that goes through my mind all the time.

“For me, you can’t change history no matter what you talk about, it is history. We can’t change it.”

Alice Hands, the inquiry’s lawyer, said that research conducted by the inquiry had revealed similar accounts, with other ambulance staff saying they were forced to “not intervene and watch people die” while deploying equipment “.

In his evidence, Anthony Marsh, national ambulance adviser to NHS England and former chairman of the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives, said he was aware of those concerns at the time and had raised the matter with senior colleagues.

But he said it “would not have been safe” to allow crews to wear PPE as they headed to the scene to cut down on overall response time.