Lack of nurses left the NHS and Britain vulnerable to the pandemic, the Covid Inquiry has heard.
The infection control lead at the Royal College of Nursing also told the probe that a lack of planning for an airborne coronavirus meant there was a national shortage of PPE.
Rosemary Gallagher, the RCN’s professional lead for infection prevention and control, said: “The resilience of the health and care workforce is absolutely essential in order to be able to deliver health care services that meet the public's needs.
“We know that we went into the pandemic with a significant shortage, about 50,000 nurses short.
“That immediately put us at risk when we needed to surge capacity to support patients at home and in hospitals.”
The intervention came on the day a damning international study warned Britain has fewer nurses than other developed nations.
New research by the King's Fund think tank compared 19 major nations and found the UK came 15th for nurses per head of population.
The first stage of the inquiry is examining preparations for a pandemic and the decisions taken during the biggest public health emergency in a century will be examined at a later date.
In his earlier evidence, Chancellor and ex-Health Secretary Jemery Hunt told inquiry chair Baroness Hallett that a focus on flu and a failure to learn from the Mers outbreak which struck Asian countries meant Britain was unprepared from a coronavirus pandemic.
Ms Gallagher, who had experience of the Mers outbreak in Saudi Arabia, said the UK did not build sufficient stockpiles of PPE, particularly for community nurses and healthcare workers not based in hospitals.
She told the inquiry: “If you are planning for a pandemic you need to consider all eventualities.
“So we need to consider both potentially the use of surgical masks… and consider the need for respiratory protective equipment for an infection that is spread through the respiratory route, predominantly.
“It is my view that there was inadequate consideration given to not just the use of respiratory protective equipment for a prolonged period of time, but exactly which elements of the health and care system would need to use respiratory protective equipment if we had widespread infections.”
Ms Reed’s evidence just days before the Government is set to publish a long-delayed workforce plan.
She said: “The RCN has campaigned and lobbied for many years around what we now call safe staffing for effective care.
“The RCN has participated in significant research with our European counterparts around the impact of insufficient numbers of registered nurses on patient care and the implications for patient safety.”
Also giving evidence was Dame Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, who was asked about cuts to public health budgets during the years of Tory austerity.
Dame Jenny was asked whether it was true that the poorest areas saw the biggest cuts to public health budgets in the years before the pandemic.
She said: “I can't comment on that objectively without seeing the numbers but my understanding is that that's the case.”
Dame Jenny said a lack of NHS and public health "capacity" worsened Britain's ability to respond to Covid-19.
She was asked whether Tory reforms fragmented the NHS and public health bodies and hindered cooperation during the pandemic.
Dame Jenny said: "My feeling is that the overall issue is more to do with capacity, rather than roles and responsibilities."
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