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Found 2,339 results
  1. News Article
    Patients suffering heart attacks during the coronavirus lockdown stayed away from hospitals with some dying as a result, a new study has found. In an analysis of more than 50,000 patients who suffered heart attacks and were treated in 99 NHS hospitals in England both before and after lockdown, researchers found the proportion of deaths for patients with a milder form of heart attack jumped during the first month of lockdown. Those suffering more severe heart attacks actually saw a lower death rate with hospitals keeping their emergency heart services running. Dr Jianhua Wu, associate professor in biostatistics at the University of Leeds and lead author of the study, said: “It has revealed that although patients were able to get access to high levels of care, the study suggests a lot of very ill people were not seeking emergency treatment and that may have been an unintended consequence of the ‘stay at home’ messaging.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 5 August 2020
  2. News Article
    Two new tests for COVID-19 that are said to deliver results within 90 minutes are to be introduced across NHS hospitals and care homes, to speed up diagnosis ahead of winter and differentiate coronavirus infection from flu, the government says. But some experts were surprised by the government’s decision, saying the particular tests were not well-known. No data had been published concerning their evaluation. The government had made mistakes in buying tests that turned out to be sub-standard in the past, they said. “Repeatedly through the pandemic the government has raced ahead purchasing tests on the basis of manufacturer’s claims, and have found later when independent studies are done that the tests do not have adequate performance for use in the NHS,” said Professor Jon Deeks from Birmingham University, part of a team who have been evaluating tests of this sort. “We would hope that the government would wait for proper evaluations, and consider the scientific evidence for all available tests before signing further contracts. The mistakes made in test purchasing have wasted millions of pounds as well as put lives at risk.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 3 August 2020
  3. News Article
    Trusts have been set a series of “very stretching” targets to recover non-covid services to nearly normal levels in the next few months, in new guidance from NHS England. NHS England and Improvement set out the system’s priorities for the remainder of 2020-21 in a “phase three letter” sent to local leaders. It said the NHS must “return to near-normal levels of non-covid health services, making full use of the capacity available in the ‘window of opportunity’ between now and winter”, when further emergency and covid pressures are anticipated. In recent weeks providers have found it very difficult to resume many services, with many running at well below normal capacity, due to infection prevention measures, staffing gaps, and other covid-related barriers. The targets in the new guidance for phase three of the NHS’s covid response include: In September trusts must deliver “at least 80 per cent of their last year’s activity for both overnight electives and for outpatient/daycase procedures, rising to 90% in October (while aiming for 70% in August)”; “This means that systems need to very swiftly return to at least 90 per cent of their last year’s levels of MRI/CT and endoscopy procedures, with an ambition to reach 100 per cent by October.” “Trusts must hit 100 per cent of their last year’s activity for first outpatient attendances and follow-ups (face to face or virtually) from September through the balance of the year (and aiming for 90 per cent in August).” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 31 July 2020
  4. News Article
    The list of lingering maladies from COVID-19 is longer and more varied than most doctors could have imagined. Ongoing problems include fatigue, a racing heartbeat, shortness of breath, achy joints, foggy thinking, a persistent loss of sense of smell, and damage to the heart, lungs, kidneys and brain. The likelihood of a patient developing persistent symptoms is hard to pin down because different studies track different outcomes and follow survivors for different lengths of time. One group in Italy found that 87% of a patient cohort hospitalized for acute COVID-19 was still struggling 2 months later. Data from the COVID Symptom Study, which uses an app into which millions of people in the United States, United Kingdom, and Sweden have tapped their symptoms, suggest 10% to 15% of people—including some “mild” cases—don’t quickly recover. But with the crisis just months old, no one knows how far into the future symptoms will endure, and whether COVID-19 will prompt the onset of chronic diseases. One such patient is Athena Akrami. Her early symptoms were textbook for COVID-19: a fever and cough, followed by shortness of breath, chest pain, and extreme fatigue. For weeks, she struggled to heal at home. But rather than ebb with time, Akrami’s symptoms waxed and waned without ever going away. She’s had just 3 weeks since March when her body temperature was normal. “Everybody talks about a binary situation, you either get it mild and recover quickly, or you get really sick and wind up in the ICU,” says Akrami, who falls into neither category. Thousands echo her story in online COVID-19 support groups. Outpatient clinics for survivors are springing up, and some are already overburdened. Akrami has been waiting more than 4 weeks to be seen at one of them, despite a referral from her general practitioner. Read full story Source: Science, 31 July 2020
  5. News Article
    New analysis by the Health Foundation reveals the devastating impact the pandemic has had on social care in England. The independent charity says the findings provide further evidence that the government acted too slowly and did not do enough to support social care users and staff, and that protecting social care has been given far lower priority than the NHS. The Health Foundation finds that policy action on social care has focused primarily on care homes and that this has risked leaving out other vulnerable groups of users and services, including those receiving care in their own homes (domiciliary care). It also notes that the shortcomings of the government’s response have been made worse by longstanding political neglect and chronic underfunding of the social care system. Since March there have been more than 30,500 excess deaths* among care home residents in England and 4,500 excess deaths among people receiving domiciliary care. While high numbers of excess deaths of people living in care homes have been well reported, the analysis shows there has been a greater proportional increase in deaths among domiciliary care users than in care homes (225% compared to 208%). And while deaths in care homes have now returned to average levels for this time of year, the latest data (up until 19 June) shows that there have continued to be excess deaths reported among domiciliary care users. The Health Foundation says that decades of inaction by successive governments have meant that the social care system entered the pandemic underfunded, understaffed, and at risk of collapse. Read full article here.
  6. News Article
    Initial data from the COVID-19 Infection Survey. This survey is being delivered in partnership with IQVIA, Oxford University and UK Biocentre. Full article here Table of contents in the report: 1. Main points 2. Number of people in England who had COVID-19 3. Regional analysis 4. Incidence rate 5. Test sensitivity and specificity 6. COVID-19 Infection Survey data 7. Collaboration 8. Glossary 9. Measuring the data 10. Strengths and limitations 11. Related links
  7. News Article
    People are being warned to familiarise themselves with the symptoms of sepsis after a study found that as many as 20,000 COVID-19 survivors could be diagnosed with the condition within a year. One in five people who receive hospital treatment for the coronavirus are at risk, according to the UK Sepsis Trust. Sepsis is triggered when the body overreacts to an infection, causing the immune system to turn on itself - leading to tissue damage, organ failure and potentially death. If spotted quickly, it can be treated with antibiotics before it turns into septic shock and damages vital organs. Read the full article here.
  8. News Article
    More than a quarter of black, Asian and minority ethnic NHS staff had not yet had a risk assessment in relation to their exposure to coronavirus, according to the latest data collection by national NHS leaders. Full article here on the HSJ website (paywalled)
  9. News Article
    One of the world’s foremost virus experts has said survivors will be living with the effects of Covid-19 for “years to come” after he was struck down by a severe infection, and called for added support for those who have recovered from the disease. Professor Peter Piot, who as director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has been at the forefront of the academic response to the pandemic, has spent his entire career studying viruses such as Ebola and HIV. Prof Piot spent a week at the Royal Free Hospital in London in early April after contracting the disease. “I spent a week in isolation on a ward with three other men. I couldn’t leave the room. When I came out the thing I remember most is seeing the sky. London was deserted - it was in acute lockdown,” he said. The fever and splitting headache he had felt before being admitted were gone and apart from chronic exhaustion he was feeling better, he said. Getting out of bed was a struggle and he had to take rests when going up the many flights of stairs of his tall Georgian townhouse. But a week later he took a turn for the worse - he became breathless and his heart rate shot up to over 100. Read the full article here
  10. News Article
    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged last week that a significant number of COVID-19 patients do not recover quickly, and instead experience ongoing symptoms, such as fatigue and cough. As many as a third of patients who were never sick enough to be hospitalized are not back to their usual health up to three weeks after their diagnosis, the report found. Read the full article here
  11. News Article
    A third of GPs believe it will take up to a year or longer for their practice to return to pre-Covid levels of capacity, even with ‘no future spikes’ of the virus. The data comes from the BMA’s latest COVID-19 tracker survey, which polled almost 2,000 GPs in England and Wales. GPs have previously warned that they are battling a backlog of referrals and patients who have been ‘overlooked’ during the coronavirus crisis. Around 26% of the 1,770 GP respondents said consultations would take between three and 12 months to return to normal when asked how quickly their practice will ‘return to full pre-Covid levels of capacity... assuming there are no future Covid spikes’. And a further 7% of GPs believed it could take ‘longer’ than a year or that consultations would ‘never’ return to pre-Covid levels. Read full story Source: Pulse, 23 July 2020
  12. News Article
    Healthcare staff working at the height of the covid-19 pandemic in England were not properly protected and were forced to work in an unsafe environment, MPs have been told. Appealing before the health and social care committee on 21 July, experts criticised the government and NHS management for their failure to provide staff with sufficient testing and personal protective equipment (PPE). The committee was gathering evidence for its inquiry into the management of the COVID-19 outbreak. Paul Nurse, director of the Francis Crick Institute, said he believed that the failure to implement better testing systems in the early days of the pandemic had contributed significantly to the problems. He said, “At the height of the pandemic, our own research—which backs up what’s been done elsewhere—found that up to 45% of healthcare workers were infected and they were infecting their colleagues and infecting patients, yet they weren’t being tested systematically. “In the healthcare environment we weren’t providing proper protection, and it’s important because it protects the most vulnerable in our society and it protects our healthcare workers. They deserve to work in a safe environment, and some of them are dying because of what they do. They deserve better.” Read full story Source: BMJ, 22 July 2020
  13. News Article
    GP systems will now be updated in 'near-real time' to reveal the result of Covid-19 tests taken by all of their patients. GPs will not need to act on the information, which will be visible on systems whether the patient tested positive or negative. This will apply to all patients where it has been possible to identify the patient's NHS number, NHS Digital said. EMIS Health chief medical officer Shaun O’Hanlon said: "Technology has played a pivotal role in the response to COVID-19 across the board and keeping the medical record up to date with COVID-19 test results means everyone who can share that record has a full picture of the patient’s health, including the patient themselves via Patient Access." "This will not only help day to day patient care, and it will also help on a wider population health level, as data-led insight relies on full and complete medical records as analysts continue to research COVID-19 and its short- and long-term impact on the nation." Read full story Source: Pulse, 20 July 2020
  14. News Article
    More than 4 in 10 anaesthetists are not convinced their hospitals would be able to provide safe services should there be a second wave of COVID-19, a new survey has indicated. A survey of members of the Royal College of Anaesthetists (RCOA) showed 44% of respondents were not confident their hospitals would be able to provide safe covid and non-covid services should there be a second surge of infections. The survey also showed levels of mental distress and morale were worsening among anaesthetists – many of whom were drafted into intensive care units during the first wave. Almost two-thirds of respondents (64%) said they had suffered mental distress in the last month due to the pressures faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now the college is calling on the NHS to plan intensively for a second covid wave and to identify, train and maintain the skills of cross-specialty “reservists” – including current clinicians, recent retirees and senior trainees — who can support the health service in the event of future surges. One anaesthetist told the RCOA they were “exhausted with constantly having to think about covid and protecting yourself” and “struggling with the realisation that PPE is here to stay for some time.” Another said: “We have burned out our human resource. We need a period of rebuilding or patient harm will result.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 22 July 2020
  15. News Article
    Hospital nurses were told their "lives would be made hell" if they complained over conditions on a coronavirus ward, a union has claimed. Unison has raised a group grievance for 36 employees, most of them nurses, at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust. It said staff on the Queen's Medical Centre ward were not trained properly, faced bullying for raising concerns and denied PPE "as punishment". The trust said the allegations were "very troubling". The union said the staff, which included nurses, senior nurses and healthcare assistants, volunteered to work on the hospital's only ward dealing with end-of-life coronavirus patients. It claimed they were not given any specialist training or counselling for dealing with dying patients and their grieving relatives. An anonymous member of staff described it as "incredibly stressful". Another worker said a board with everyone's record of sickness was put on display in a break room to intimidate staff. Dave Ratchford from Unison said: "This is absolutely shocking stuff. We're talking about a very high-performing team who fell foul of a culture that permits bullying and fails to address it" "Staff were told their lives would be made hell for complaining." Read full story Source: BBC News, 21 July 2020
  16. News Article
    Almost half of healthcare workers at some hospitals were infected with COVID-19 during the height of the first wave, the director of a biomedical research centre has told MPs. Sir Paul Nurse, director of the Francis Crick Institute, told MPs today that COVID-19 had infected up to 45% of healthcare workers during ”the height of the pandemic” at some hospitals, according to the centre’s research. Chief medical officer Chris Whitty also told the Health and Social Care Committee that there was more evidence that COVID-19 was transmitted between staff, rather than from patients to staff, and there was “just as much risk as people being in their break rooms than on wards”. Sir Paul told MPs the Francis Crick Institute contacted Downing Street in March and wrote to health secretary Matt Hancock in April to emphasise the importance of regular systematic testing for all healthcare workers as it was “quite clear” that those without symptoms were likely to be transmitting the disease. He said hospital staff “were infecting their colleagues, they were infecting their patients, yet they were not being tested systematically.” Read full story Source: HSJ, 21 July 2020
  17. News Article
    Doctors who have been shielding during the covid-19 pandemic have said they are worried for their safety when they return to work. From 1 August those who are at high risk of serious illness if they contract covid-19 will no longer be advised to shield in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.123 But doctors who have been shielding during the pandemic have expressed concerns about their safety when they return to work, and say they feel forgotten by their employers. Read full story (paywalled) Source: BMJ, 21 July 2020
  18. News Article
    About 3,500 people in England may die within the next five years of one of the four main cancers – breast, lung, oesophageal or bowel – as a result of delays in being diagnosed because of COVID-19, say the researchers in the Lancet Oncology journal. “Our findings demonstrate the impact of the national Covid-19 response, which may cut short the lives of thousands of people with cancer in England over the next five years,” said Dr Ajay Aggarwal from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who led the research. Routine cancer screening was suspended during the lockdown, the authors said. So was the routine referral to hospital outpatient departments of people with symptoms that could be something else but also might possibly be cancer. Only those deemed to need emergency care by the GP or those who go to A&E are being picked up. Inevitably, those are people with more advanced cancers. If cancer is picked up at an earlier stage, successful treatment and survival are much more likely. “Whilst currently attention is being focused on diagnostic pathways where cancer is suspected, the issue is that a significant number of cancers are diagnosed in patients awaiting investigation for symptoms not considered related to be cancer. Therefore we need a whole system approach to avoid the predicted excess deaths,” said Aggarwal. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 20 July 2020
  19. News Article
    The coronavirus vaccine candidate being developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University induces a strong immune response and appears to be safe, according to preliminary trial results. The early stage trial, which involved 1,077 people, has found that the vaccine trains the immune system to produce antibodies and white blood cells capable of fighting the virus. It also causes few side effects. Professor Sarah Gilbert, co-author of the Oxford University study, described the findings as promising but said there “is still much work to be done before we can confirm if our vaccine will help manage the Covid-19 pandemic”. The results came as the UK secured 90 million doses of other promising Covid-19 vaccines, while clinical trials of a new inhaled coronavirus treatment showed it significantly reduced the number of hospitalised patients needing intensive care. Read full story Source: The Independent, 21 July 2020
  20. News Article
    Dentists are warning of a looming dental and mouth cancer crisis after months of delays and patients being unable to get check-ups and repair work. It comes as surgeries begin to reopen more widely but dentists are still facing significant restrictions on how they can operate, with rooms having to be vacated for an hour after any treatment is done using a drill. For Maezama Malik, who is the principal dentist of her surgery in Croydon, south London, this has caused a big backlog of patients. She said the biggest worry is that a patient might have "something minor that could progress in a few months" without them seeing a dentist. Read full story Source: Sky News, 18 July 2020
  21. News Article
    British scientists analysing data from a widely-used COVID-19 symptom-tracking app have found there are six distinct types of the disease, each distinguished by a cluster of symptoms. King’s College London team found that the six types also correlated with levels of severity of infection, and with the likelihood of a patient needing help with breathing - such as oxygen or ventilator treatment - if they are hospitalised. The findings could help doctors to predict which COVID-19 patients are most at risk and likely to need hospital care in future waves of the epidemic. Read full story Source: Reuters, 17 July 2020
  22. News Article
    Matt Hancock has ordered an urgent review into how Public Health England (PHE) calculates daily COVID-19 death figures. It comes after scientists said they believed PHE was “over-exaggerating” the daily coronavirus death toll, by counting people if they die of any cause at any time after testing positive for the disease. Professor Yoon K Loke, of the University of East Anglia, and Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence-based medicine at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care, said on Thursday night that a “statistical flaw” in the way PHE compiles data on deaths created a disparity in figures published by the different UK nations. “It seems that PHE regularly looks for people on the NHS database who have ever tested positive, and simply checks to see if they are still alive or not,” they wrote. “PHE does not appear to consider how long ago the Covid test result was, nor whether the person has been successfully treated in hospital and discharged to the community. Anyone who has tested Covid-positive but subsequently died at a later date of any cause will be included on the PHE Covid death figures.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 17 July 2020
  23. News Article
    The hospital trust which has been recording the largest number of covid deaths for several weeks has asked NHS England and NHS Improvement for help with infection control. East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust is also getting help from the Kent and Medway Clinical Commissioning Group, including a senior infection control and prevention nurse who is now working with the trust. It has seen persistently high numbers of covid deaths at a time when most other trusts have seen them dwindle to nothing or almost nothing. In the week to 10 July, it had 18 deaths – 9.5% of the national total. In a statement to HSJ yesterday the trust said it had “recently asked for support from NHS England and NHS Improvement to strengthen our infection prevention and control resource”. It said it had also introduced “a strict ‘front door’ policy, limiting the number of people on site, taking temperature checks before people enter the building, providing face masks and hand washing facilities”; begun testing asymptomatic staff; and regularly testing asymptomatic patients. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 16 July 2020
  24. News Article
    Every child in Scotland will need additional mental health support as a consequence of measures taken to tackle the coronavirus crisis, according to the country’s children and young people’s commissioner. Speaking exclusively to the Guardian as he publishes Scotland’s comprehensive assessment of the impact of the pandemic on children’s rights – the first such review undertaken anywhere in the world – Bruce Adamson said the pandemic had sent a “very negative” message about how decision-makers value young people’s voices. He said Scotland has been viewed as a children’s rights champion but that efforts to involve young people in the dramatic changes being made to their education and support “went out the window as soon as lockdown came along”. There have been escalating concerns across the UK about children’s mental health after support structures were stripped away at the start of lockdown. Earlier this week, the Guardian revealed that five children with special educational needs have killed themselves in the space of five months in Kent, amidst warnings over the impact of school closures on pupils. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 16 July 2020
  25. News Article
    The initial data on a trial of the coronavirus vaccine being developed by Oxford University will be released in the coming week, The Lancet medical journal has announced amid reports its findings have been promising. The development of a vaccine to fight against the virus has been touted as pivotal in returning the world to life as it was before the pandemic by protecting vulnerable people and building up immunity among populations. Now Oxford University’s contribution - one of the world’s leading candidates for a viable vaccine – is understood to have made promising results in initial testing. Read full story Source: The Independent, 16 July 2020
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