The government said on Saturday it would consider the recommendation “with the utmost urgency”.

Thousands of hemophiliacs and other hospital patients became infected with HIV or hepatitis C in the 1970s and 1980s through contaminated blood products, largely imported from the United States. The situation has been called the worst treatment disaster in the history of the UK healthcare system.

Brian Langstaff, a retired judge who is presiding over the inquest, said on Friday that payments to more than 2,000 partners and survivors should not wait until his long-running investigation is completed because of the “profound physical and mental suffering”. caused by the tragedy. .

The tainted blood was linked to the supply of a clotting agent called factor VIII, which the British health service purchased from the United States. Some of the plasma used to make blood products was allocated to high-risk donors, including inmates, who were paid to donate blood samples.

After years of campaigning by victims, an investigation was opened in 2019. A final report is expected next year.

Three former UK health secretaries – Labour’s Andy Burnham and Tories Jeremy Hunt and Matt Hancock – have urged the government to heed Langstaff’s recommendation.

“Successive governments, of which I was a part, did not act as quickly as they should have, and we have to recognize that as a terrible, terrible injustice,” Hunt said.