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Found 196 results
  1. News Article
    People will be asked to self-isolate for two weeks even if they are asymptomatic after coming into ‘high-risk’ contact with a person who has tested positive for COVID-19 – a testing chief has told NHS executives. This marks a change from the official guidance given to users of the government’s contact tracing app – on NHS’ COVID-19 website – which states: “If you do not have symptoms, you do not need to self-isolate at this time.” John Newton, a leader of the UK’s testing programme, would be “directed towards those people at high risk” instead of the wider public. He added the government faces a “huge communications exercise” next week ahead of the launch of the test and trace programme. Giving an update on the test and trace programme – which is due to launch on 1 June – Professor Newton said: “People who are deemed high risk contact of confirmed [COVID-19] cases will be told to self-isolate for 14 days, even if they have no symptoms at the time. Professor Newton said: “The point is there will still be a requirement to contain the virus, but the impact in terms of containment will be directed towards those people at high risk so the rest of the population can enjoy more normal life." He said the programme’s success would depend on the public’s response in terms of: Presenting themselves for a test if they have symptoms; Providing the information needed to identify high risk contacts; and Those people identified as high risk contacts complying with advice to self-isolate. Read full story Source: HSJ, 21 May 2020
  2. News Article
    Time is running out to finalise a track and trace strategy that would avoid a potential second surge in coronavirus cases, NHS leaders have said. The NHS Confederation warned of "severe" consequences to staff and patients if the right system was not established quickly and that lockdown measures should not be eased until a clear plan was in place. Contact tracing identifies those who may have come into contact with an infected person, either through an app or by phone and email, so they can avoid potentially passing the disease on. It follows the Prime Minister's pledge to introduce a "world-beating" contact tracing system in England from June. Niall Dickson, chief executive of the confederation, which represents health and care leaders, welcomed Boris Johnson's pledge made at Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday. But in a letter to Health Secretary Matt Hancock, Mr Dickson said without a clear strategy the UK was at greater risk of a second peak of the virus. He said a strategy should have been in place sooner and if the right system was not instigated rapidly the ramifications for the NHS "could be severe". Speaking on the Today programme, Mr Dickson said: "We are absolutely clear that contact tracing is the right thing to do, it is absolutely critical, it has got to be in place to prevent any notion of a second surge if the lockdown is being further released." Read full story Source: 21 May 2020
  3. News Article
    The government needs to make sure its coronavirus testing strategy is fit for purpose instead of focusing on hitting targets, says the Royal College of GPs (RCGP). In a letter to Health Secretary Matt Hancock, chairman Prof Martin Marshall said long wait times were "undermining confidence" in the results. Health professionals were also concerned about the accuracy of some test results, he said. The government said "95% of tests" were processed "in less than 48 hours". Ensuring there are enough tests to meet demand is part of the government's five tests it says must be met before easing lockdown restrictions. However, the absence of a clear strategy had left patients vulnerable, according to Prof Marshall. He said the RCGP did not currently believe the testing strategy was capable of working to prevent a second wave of infections and "secure the overall health of the population". Read full story Source: BBC News, 16 May 2020
  4. News Article
    With all care home staff and residents now eligible for testing, with a priority given to those in homes looking after residents over 65 years of age, a new online portal has been launched to streamline the process of arranging coronavirus test kit deliveries. As national testing capacity continues to increase, the government is prioritising testing for care homes and other areas identified as having the greatest need. As such, across England, all symptomatic and asymptomatic care home staff and residents can be tested for coronavirus. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is working alongside local authority Directors of Public Health, Directors of Adult Social Services and local NHS providers to deliver this testing programme for care homes. Tens of thousands of care home workers and residents have already been tested, either by Public Health England or at drive through testing sites, mobile testing units and via satellite testing kits – packages of tests sent to care homes for staff to use on residents. Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock said: “The additional testing capacity we have achieved delivers many thousands of tests a day for residents and staff in care homes. This new portal allows those who book tests for staff and residents to do so even more easily, and it also offers a route for the prioritisation of care homes with the greatest need." Read full story Source: National Health Executive, 12 May 2020
  5. News Article
    Hospital staff may be carrying SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 disease, without realising they are infected, according to a study by researchers at the University of Cambridge. Patients admitted to NHS hospitals are now routinely screened for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and isolated if necessary. But NHS workers, including patient-facing staff on the front line, such as doctors, nurses and physiotherapists, are tested and excluded from work only if they develop symptoms of the illness. Many of them, however, may show no symptoms at all even if infected, as a new study published in the journal eLife demonstrates. The implications of the new study, say senior authors Dr Mike Weekes and Professor Stephen Baker from the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease (CITIID), are that hospitals need to be vigilant and introduce screening programmes across their workforces. “Test! Test! Test! And then test some more,” Dr Weekes explains. “All staff need to get tested regularly for COVID-19, regardless of whether they have any sort of symptoms – this will be vital to stop infection spreading within the hospital setting.” Read full story Source: University of Cambridge, 12 May 2020
  6. News Article
    Care home operators have accused the UK government of “a complete system failure” over testing for COVID-19 after officials repeatedly deflected responsibility for the task and left vulnerable residents unchecked. As ministers admitted it will be more than three weeks before all homes are offered tests, care home managers said lives have been put at risk and conditions for dementia sufferers worsened because of the government’s failure so far to test hundreds of thousands of staff and residents. The programme was announced by the health secretary, Matt Hancock, two weeks ago but only tens of thousands of people have been tested. Public Health England (PHE), the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) have repeatedly passed the buck about who should carry out the tests, according to correspondence with care homes seen by the Guardian. When Nottingham Community Housing Association (NCHA) tried to get tests for its care home residents and staff, a PHE official said it didn’t know anything about testing residents, before pointing them to the CQC. PHE then changed its mind again saying it would send the tests, but when they failed to arrive, PHE reversed again saying CQC was responsible. “It is very frustrating because we can’t effectively manage the risk without knowing [who has the virus],” said Holly Dagnall, director of homes and wellbeing at NCHA. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 12 May 2020
  7. News Article
    Ministers have asked local directors of public health to take charge of COVID-19 testing in English care homes in what will be seen as a tacit admission that centralised attempts to run the programme have fallen short. In a letter to sector leaders, seen by the Guardian, the care minister, Helen Whately, acknowledged that testing of care home residents and staff needs to be “more joined up”. She describes the new arrangements as “a significant change”. Under the new approach, public health directors employed by local councils will take lead responsibility for arranging the testing of some 400,000 care home residents and 500,000 staff, in discussion with directors of adult social services, local NHS bodies and regional directors of Public Health England (PHE). Critically, the local public health directors will decide which homes should have priority in the testing programme, which is still working up to a capacity of 30,000 tests a day for the sector. The switch is a conspicuous, if belated, vote of confidence in local government’s ability to help get a grip on the Covid crisis. There has been frustration and incomprehension that public health teams have until now been left as bit-players in the testing programme and in tracking and tracing carriers of the virus. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 8 May 2020
  8. News Article
    Local authorities must be at the heart of contact tracing because COVID-19 is best understood as a pattern of local outbreaks rather than a national pandemic, says Sir Chris Ham and Robin Tuddenham in an HSJ article. Community testing and contact tracing represent our greatest hope for managing the risks to health of COVID-19 until a vaccine and effective treatments become available. Experts in infectious disease base their understanding of this on previous pandemics, and the experience of countries like South Korea and Germany. Work is underway at pace to resume contact tracking and tracing in England. It is understood that this programme will begin in earnest from 18 May following a pilot on the Isle of Wight. This work is a core part of Matt Hancock’s five-point plan for combating COVID-19, in support of some relaxation of lockdown anticipated soon. Whilst the pace is understandable, the methods and approach taken are top down, lack an effective role for key regional co-ordination through the Integrated Care Systems/Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships and Local Resilience Forums, and risk marginalising the essential skills of local authorities, GPs and the voluntary and community sector in place, according to Ham amd Tuddenham. Read full story Source: HSJ, 5 May 2020
  9. News Article
    An NHS app that aims to track the spread of coronavirus is being rolled out for the first time, as part of a trial on the Isle of Wight. Council and healthcare workers will be the first to try the contact-tracing app, with the rest of the island able to download it from Thursday. The app aims to quickly trace recent contacts of anyone who tests positive for the virus. However, the new NHS coronavirus app will have “unintended consequences”, according to the head of the unit developing it. Officials do not know “exactly how it will work”, Matthew Gould, chief executive of NHSX, told a parliamentary committee. “There will be unintended consequences, there will for sure be some things we have to evolve,” he said. Privacy campaigners have raised concern over the potential for “mission creep” with the data that will be gathered on people’s movements and contact with others. The Health Service Journal reported that it has not yet passed tests on cyber security, performance and clinical safety needed to be included in the NHS app library. Read full story Source: The Independent, 4 May 2020
  10. News Article
    Healthcare workers providing support outside of the NHS are finding it harder to access coronavirus tests than their colleagues inside the service, a survey of nurses has suggested. A poll of 22,000 health and care workers conducted by the Royal College of Nursing found 44% of respondents did not know how to access testing – while 76% said they had not been offered a test. The problem was also particularly pronounced among the temporary workers, with four in five not offered testing compared to three-quarters of full time workers. Meanwhile the survey found 79% of those working outside of the NHS had not been offered a test, compared with 75% in the health service. Dame Donna Kinnair, chief executive and general secretary of the RCN, said: “It is concerning to see that some nursing staff, particularly those outside the NHS, are still having issues accessing COVID-19 testing. Read full story Source: The Independent, 4 May 2020
  11. News Article
    Hospital leaders have launched a strident attack on the government’s coronavirus testing strategy, as it became clear that the target of 100,000 daily tests by 30 April would be comprehensively missed. NHS Providers, which represents foundation trusts in England, rounded on ministers for “a series of frequent tactical announcements” to expand testing criteria, and dismissed the 100,000 target as a “red herring” that distracted from their failures. Just 33,000 people were tested for COVID-19 in the latest 24-hour period – a record high for a single day – according to official figures. Dominic Raab, the first secretary of state, said that more than 52,000 tests were carried out, but this total is apparently bolstered by 19,000 retests. Test capacity was now more than 73,000 a day, he said – still considerably below the target set by the health secretary, Matt Hancock, at the start of April. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 30 April 2020
  12. News Article
    Care homes looking after thousands of vulnerable residents have said none of their staff has been tested for coronavirus. Out of 210 care providers spoken to by the BBC, 159 said none of their workers had had a test. BBC England spoke to care homes and companies across the country, who between them employ nearly 18,000 staff and have almost 13,000 residents. Many said they had seen no testing at all, while others have spoken of struggles to access official test centres after reporting online that they have symptoms. Some have told how staff face long journeys to test centres, with one reporting a three-hour round trip. On Sunday it was announced that the military will begin testing essential workers in mobile units operating at sites in "hard to reach" areas, including care homes. Anna Knight runs Harbour House Care Home on the Dorset coast and said getting enough personal protective equipment (PPE) and testing for coronavirus were her biggest challenges. Read full story Source: BBC News, 26 April 2020
  13. News Article
    Coronavirus tests given to thousands of NHS staff so they could return to work have been found to be flawed and should no longer be relied on, a leaked document reveals. The memo from Public Health England (PHE), sent earlier this month, warns of "degraded" performance, meaning the results are less reliable than first thought. Almost 100,000 NHS and social care workers and their relatives have now undergone tests in an effort to get as many staff back to the frontline as possible. But the memo, dated April 11, reveals that "discordant results" have been identified in the tests, run by PHE and NHS laboratories, requiring ambiguous samples to be re-checked. Read full story Source: The Telegraph, 22 April 2020
  14. News Article
    Experts have warned giving the public coronavirus antibody tests to be carried out at home could lead to “disastrous results”. A testing manager at an NHS trust told HSJ they feared the public may take the tests too soon for antibodies to appear, which could produce misleading results, while a leading virologist at the British Society for Immunology called for antibody tests to be carried out in GP surgeries. Public Health England has previously said it wants to distribute antibody tests via Amazon and Boots and make them available to the general public. Health secretary Matt Hancock has also promised increased antibody tests will form part of 100,000 of all types of daily COVID-19 tests by the end of April. Read full story Source: HSJ, 17 April 2020
  15. News Article
    A leaked letter seen by the BBC has revealed an extensive list of concerns about how the social care sector is coping with the coronavirus crisis. The letter raises fears about funding, testing, personal protective equipment (PPE) and the shielding scheme for vulnerable people. Written on Saturday, to a senior official at the Department of Health and Social Care by the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (Adass), it says mixed messages from the government have created "confusion and additional workload". On protective equipment for care workers, the letter says the national handling has been "shambolic". Early drops of equipment have been "paltry" and more recent deliveries have been "haphazard", with some even being confiscated by border control for the NHS. And while the rollout of testing for care workers has been generally welcomed, the letter states "testing for care workers appears to be being rolled out without being given thought to who is going to be tested and what we are going to do with the result". Read full story Source: BBC News, 16 April 2020
  16. News Article
    All care home residents and staff with COVID-19 symptoms will be tested for coronavirus as laboratory capacity increases, the government has promised. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he was "determined" to ensure everyone who needed a test had access to one. Care providers have been calling for more testing for weeks, with charities saying the virus is "running wild" amid outbreaks at more than 2,000 homes. At the moment only the first five residents who show symptoms in a care home are tested, to determine whether there is an outbreak of the virus. Providers have also complained that deaths among residents were being "airbrushed" out of official figures and demanded greater support for the industry. Read full story Source: BBC News, 15 April 2020
  17. News Article
    Some Welsh NHS staff with Covid-19 have been given wrong test results and were told they did not have coronavirus, BBC Wales has learned. They are among a group of ten who have been given incorrect results - including eight from Aneurin Bevan Health Board and two from elsewhere. It is not clear how many of the ten had Covid-19 and were told they did not, or vice versa. The Gwent-based heath board said the staff were contacted "immediately". It happened when a small number of test samples from a batch of 96 were attributed to the wrong patients. Read full story Source: BBC Wales, 7 April 2020
  18. News Article
    The Government will look for a refund for millions of coronavirus tests ordered from China after scientists found they were too unreliable to be used by the public. Ministers will attempt to recoup taxpayers' money spent on the fingerprick tests after an Oxford University trial found they returned inaccurate results. The failure is a significant setback because it had been hoped the antibody tests would show who had already built up immunity, therefore offering a swifter route out of lockdown. Read full story Source: The Telegraph, 6 April 2020
  19. News Article
    Plaid Cymru Leader Adam Price has argued that the Welsh Government should appoint a procurement tsar to get to grips with Wales's serious shortage of COVID-19 testing kits, personal protective equipment (PPE) for frontline health and care staff and medical devices for patients. Wales is currently only testing 1,100 people a day when it was planning to test 6,000. This follows the collapse of an alleged deal between the Welsh Government and private company Roche which would have provided for 5,000 of those tests. Adam Price made the case for the appointment of a tsar whose "sole responsibility" would be the procurement and supply of COVID-19 tests, PPE, and oxygen and medical devices for Wales. He cited cases of care homes with just one or two boxes of surgical masks - each enough to last just two days for one patient, as well as hospital staff being forced to wear paper underwear over their hair due to the lack of any other protection. Read full story Source: Plaid Cymru Party of Wales, 6 April 2020
  20. News Article
    Boris Johnson has been forced to shift strategy on the government’s testing regime for coronavirus after criticism of the slow pace of checks being carried out on frontline NHS staff. Private laboratories are now being drafted in to do the tests where before these were being performed through a centralised process. The prime minister accepted last night that mass testing was the way out of the crisis and said in a tweet that it would “eventually unlock the puzzle of coronavirus”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 2 April 2020
  21. News Article
    Acute trusts have been told to set aside 15% of their daily coronavirus tests for NHS key workers who are quarantining at home with others. New guidance for NHS trust chief executives on covid-19 testing has been published after NHS England chief executive Sir Simon Stevens announced hundreds of frontline staff would be given antigen tests from next week. The guidance from NHSE said acute trusts should prioritise testing staff working in critical care, emergency departments and ambulance services, along with “any other high priority groups you determine locally”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 30 March 2020
  22. News Article
    The NHS could have prevented “chaos and panic” had the system not been left wholly unprepared for the pandemic, the editor of the BMJ has said. Numerous warnings were issued but these were not heeded, Richard Horton wrote in the Lancet. He cited an example from his journal on 20 January, pointing to a global epidemic: “Preparedness plans should be readied for deployment at short notice, including securing supply chains of pharmaceuticals, personal protective equipment, hospital supplies and the necessary human resources to deal with the consequences of a global outbreak of this magnitude.” Horton wrote that the government’s Contain-Delay-Mitigate-Research plan had failed. “It failed, in part, because ministers didn’t follow WHO’s advice to ‘test, test, test’ every suspected case. They didn’t isolate and quarantine. They didn’t contact trace." “These basic principles of public health and infectious disease control were ignored, for reasons that remain opaque. The result has been chaos and panic across the NHS.” Read full story Source: Guardian, 28 March 2020
  23. News Article
    The absence of COVID-19 testing for NHS staff is causing huge workforce shortages by forcing doctors to self-isolate even if they do not have the virus, the head of the BMA has warned. The government’s advice is for people with COVID-19 symptoms to stay at home for seven days, but for all other household members who remain well to isolate for 14 days. The BMA council chairman, Chaand Nagpaul, said that the lack of testing for staff was “counter-intuitive” as it was likely to be forcing more staff than necessary to stay away from hospitals and GP surgeries because they do not know if they are infected. Read full story (paywalled) Source: BMJ, 27 March 2020
  24. News Article
    NHS staff who have contracted coronavirus but remain at work because they show no symptoms are probably infecting patients, a public health official admitted yesterday. Doctors said they were worried about becoming “part of the problem” owing to a lack of testing and a shortage of protective equipment, particularly outside hospitals. Masks, gloves and visors can help stop people infecting others and stop them becoming infected. The British Medical Association said that staff testing was urgently needed so that doctors and nurses knew if it was safe for them to see patients. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 27 March 2020
  25. News Article
    The government has bought 3.5 million coronavirus antibody tests — with more widespread testing of NHS workers coming “online soon”, the health secretary has said. Matt Hancock also told a press conference this evening that a new testing facility had been opened in Milton Keynes as the government aims to “ramp up” the number of antibody tests — which will determine whether people have had the virus and can therefore return to work. Mr Hancock also said the government had shipped 7.5 million pieces of personal protective equipment over the last 24 hours, following major shortages, and confirmed the conversion of east London’s Excel centre into a huge temporary hospital facility, with between 500 to 4,000 beds. Read full story Source: HSJ, 24 March 2020
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