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News ArticlePoliticians and doctors in Germany have called for urgent action to control the spread of COVID-19 after a record number of cases were reported on 11 November. Germany had 50 196 new confirmed Covid cases on 11 November, up from 39 676 cases on 10 November and 9658 on 1 November, showed figures from the Robert Koch Institute. A total of 235 Covid related deaths were reported on 11 November, up from 23 on 1 November. Speaking in the Bundestag, Germany’s lower house of parliament, the federal vice chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said that immediate steps must be taken to “winterproof” Germany
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News ArticleFollowing a number of serious infections, hospitals have warned about the risks of wearing the wrong kind of face mask during surgery. This comes after a patient safety alert was issued by NHS England where it was reported that respirator masks have been acquired by the millions during the coronavirus pandemic but sometimes have been deployed in inappropriate settings. “These incident reports and feedback from services suggest that the risks of valved respirators and PAPRs for surgical and invasive procedures is not well recognised, and that their use may have become routine in som
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News ArticleThousands of hospital patients were allowed to return to their care homes without a Covid test despite a direct plea to the government from major care providers not to allow the practice, the Observer has been told. As the crisis began to unfold in early March 2020, providers held an emergency meeting with department of health officials in which they urged the government not to force them to accept untested residents. However, weeks later, official advice remained that tests were not mandatory and thousands of residents are thought to have returned to their homes without a negative Covid
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News ArticleAlmost as soon as the pandemic struck early last year, NHS England recognised that patients catching Covid-19 while they were in hospital for non-Covid care was a real risk and could lead to even more deaths than were already occurring. Unfortunately their fears have been borne out by events since – every acute hospital in England has been hit by this problem to some extent. Over the last 15 months various NHS and medical bodies have looked into hospital-acquired Covid and published reports and detailed guidance to help hospitals stem its spread. They include the Healthcare Safety Investi
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England test-and-trace glitch blamed for spread of India Covid variant
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
A glitch in the government’s £37bn test-and-trace system may have helped fuel the spread of a highly-transmissible Covid variant in one of the UK’s worst-hit towns, it has emerged. The software error meant that more than 700 infected people and their close contacts were not promptly passed on to local health teams, allowing them to potentially spread the disease further. The number of missing cases was highest in Blackburn with Darwen, where about 300 people are believed to have been lost in the system during a faulty IT upgrade. The Lancashire town is battling one of the UK’s larges -
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News ArticleAlmost half of hospital patients have been discharged without receiving the results of their coronavirus test – including some patients who were sent to care homes, new research from Healthwatch and British Cross has revealed. Independent national patient body Healthwatch England said it had learned many patients were discharged from hospitals between March and August this year without proper assessments with many vulnerable people sent home without medication, equipment or the care they needed. At the start of the pandemic thousands of patients were discharged to care homes as NHS E
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News ArticleLevels of protective antibodies in people wane "quite rapidly" after coronavirus infection, say researchers. Antibodies are a key part of our immune defences and stop the virus from getting inside the body's cells. The Imperial College London team found the number of people testing positive for antibodies has fallen by 26% between June and September. They say immunity appears to be fading and there is a risk of catching the virus multiple times. More than 350,000 people in England have taken an antibody test as part of the REACT-2 study so far. In the first round of testin
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News ArticleA technical glitch that meant nearly 16,000 cases of coronavirus went unreported has delayed efforts to trace contacts of people who tested positive. Public Health England (PHE) said 15,841 cases between 25 September and 2 October were left out of the UK daily case figures. They were then added in to reach Saturday's figure of 12,872 new cases and Sunday's 22,961 figure. PHE said all those who tested positive had been informed. But it means others in close contact with them were not. The issue has been resolved, PHE said, with outstanding cases passed on to tracers by 01:00 BST
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News ArticleA new study has highlighted the number of NHS staff who can be infected with coronavirus but be completely unaware they are a risk to their colleagues and patients. The research by doctors at University College London Hospitals (UCLH) found a third of staff working in two maternity departments at UCLH and St George’s Hospital tested positive for the virus but had no symptoms. Overall, one in six staff who had not previously been diagnosed with the virus were tested for COVID-19 antibodies and were found to be positive for infection. Prof Keith Neal, emeritus professor of epidemi
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The NHS needs to protect the GPs at high risk from covid
Clive Flashman posted a news article in News
Dr Rebecca Fisher gives the lowdown on why maintaining general practice as a ‘front door’ to the NHS that is safe for both GPs and patients is not easy. It’s fair to say that Matt Hancock’s pronouncement that henceforth all consultations should be “teleconsultations unless there’s a compelling reason not to”, has not been universally welcomed in general practice. In my surgery, practicing in a pandemic has seen us change our ways of working beyond imagination. In March, like many other practices, we shifted overnight to a “telephone first” approach. And whilst at peak-pandemic -
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Shop staff and transport workers must be given masks, say doctors
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Shop workers and other essential staff should be provided with face masks to control the spread of coronavirus, according to the British Medical Association (BMA). The doctors’ union is also calling on the government to ask all members of the public to cover their mouths and noses while outside their homes. “Common sense tells you that a barrier between people must offer a level of protection, however small,” said Dr Chaand Nagpaul, BMA council chairman. “The government must pursue all avenues of reducing the spread of infection. “This includes asking the public to wear fac -
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Coronavirus: Concern over protective kit guidance change
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Concerns have been raised that updated government guidance on personal protective equipment (PPE) could put hospital staff and patients at risk. Healthcare workers have been advised to reuse gowns or wear different kit if stocks in England run low. Unions representing doctors and nurses have expressed concerns about the updated Public Health England guidance. Healthcare staff treating patients with Covid-19 have previously been advised to wear long-sleeved disposable fluid-repellent gowns. But Public Health England changed its guidance on Friday, outlining three options if -
News ArticleA family from East Sussex may have been Britain’s first coronavirus victims, catching the virus in mid-January after one of them visited an Austrian ski resort that is now under investigation for allegedly covering up the early outbreak. If confirmed by official tests, it would mean the outbreak in Britain started more than a month earlier than currently thought. As things stand, the first recorded UK case was on January 31, and the earliest documented incidence of transmission within Britain occurred on 28 February. Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology
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News ArticlePeople who recover from coronavirus have a similar level of protection against future infection as those who receive a Covid vaccine – at least for the first five months, research suggests. A Public Health England (PHE) study of more than 20,000 healthcare workers found that immunity acquired from an earlier Covid infection provided 83% protection against reinfection for at least 20 weeks. The findings show that while people are unlikely to become reinfected soon after their first infection, it is possible to catch the virus again and potentially spread it to others. “Overall I
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Content ArticleKey findings: The nursing staff provided exemplary care to the six patients on the ward; they were compassionate, professional and worked to ensure the patients were provided with the best care possible. The decision to transfer the residents was made quickly on a Friday, and staff had a short time to plan and respond putting together a COVID-ready ward. The patients required full nursing care and deteriorated relatively quickly. Consequently, nurses needed to spend long periods of time at the patients’ bedsides. There was no way for nursing staff to communicate with staff ou
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News ArticleNearly 20 major healthcare bodies are appealing to the Prime Minister for better personal protection against coronavirus. They say at least 930 health and care workers have died of COVID-19 and more are experiencing long-term effects. In a letter, they say measures to stop airborne spreading are "inadequate" and call for urgent improvement in masks and other defences against variants. The government said it was monitoring evidence on airborne transmission and would update advice "where necessary". The organisations involved represent a wide range of health professionals, fr
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Hospital acquired covid infections hit record high
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The number of COVID-19 infections likely to have been acquired in hospital are rising again for the first time in three weeks and their proportion of all cases has reached record levels for the second wave, HSJ can reveal. NHS England data covering the week to 6 December (the latest available) shows 1,787 COVID-19 cases were acquired in-hospital – a rise of almost 14% on the week before. The number of hospital-acquired, or “nosocomial”, infections had been falling since the week to 15 November, when 1,794 were recorded. This week, hospital acquired covid infections amounted to 21% of -
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Hospital Covid ‘hotspots’ mapped out in a new HSIB report
Clive Flashman posted a news article in News
Hospital hotspots for COVID-19 have been highlighted in a new report by safety investigators. The report by the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) makes a series of observations to help the health service reduce the spread of coronavirus in healthcare settings. Hospital hotspots for COVID-19 included the central nurses’ stations and areas where computers and medical notes were shared, the HSIB found. The investigation was initiated after a Sage report in May which found that 20% of hospital patients were reporting symptoms of Covid-19 seven days following admission – sugge
