Number of nurses coming from EU fell again and coronavirus prevented further arrivals
Boris Johnson’s pledge to recruit 50,000 more NHS nurses is in doubt after the number coming from the EU fell again and coronavirus prevented thousands of arrivals from the rest of the world.
The prime minister made the promise a cornerstone of his general election campaign last year and has since reiterated many times his determination to deliver the increase.
Continue reading...Review into vaginal mesh and other products reveals much patient harm was ‘avoidable’
An arrogant culture in which serious medical complications were dismissed as “women’s problems” contributed to a string of healthcare scandals over several decades, an inquiry ordered by the government has found.
The review of vaginal mesh, hormonal pregnancy tests and an anti-epilepsy medicine that harmed unborn babies paints a damning picture of a medical establishment that failed to acknowledge problems even in the face of mounting safety concerns, leading to avoidable harm to patients.
Continue reading...Charity boss says blaming care sector for repeated government mistakes is unacceptable
The Department of Health and Social Care has recorded a further 155 deaths in the UK in its latest daily update on coronavirus. That takes the official UK death total to 44,391.
As we try to point out every day, this official headline total used by the government is not the actual total. That is because these figures only include people who tested positive for coronavirus and died. Taking into account the deaths of people who did not have a test, but where coronavirus was cited on the death certificate, the real total is more than 55,000.
The Welsh health minister has expressed concern that workers at a food factory where there has been an outbreak of Covid-19 might be spreading the virus because they take it turns to use the same bed.
Speaking at the Welsh government’s daily briefing, Vaughan Gething said there had been a suggestion that workers were coming off shift and jumping into a bed just vacated by a housemate who then went off to work.
I’m genuinely concerned about the conditions that people live within, not just in houses of multiple occupation where people may share bathroom and toilet facilities or kitchens, and the opportunity for contact indoors and surfaces is an obvious concern. You’ve heard that from our scientists, and others.
But in particular, if there is reality to the suggestion that people are sharing beds, there’s an obvious risk if people finish one shift, then return from that shift to get into a bed that someone has just got out of. So there are real issues here about accommodation and how it may be an unhelpful factor in driving transmission within that workforce.
Continue reading...An emergency medicine physician on the terrors of Covid-19, and why lockdown is being lifted too soon
My impression is that the population thinks that it’s all settled down now and everything’s OK. And that’s not true. Every time you go on to the intensive care unit you get a visual reminder of why it’s not, because of the amount of equipment that you have to put on to just go and simply say hello to a patient.
Seeing the images from Italy had been terrifying. We were all wrestling our own demons, organising our personal affairs, getting wills done that we’d put off for years. When the worst of it hit it was really hard watching the team cope with the rush of reality. I think the new additions to the team that we had built were hit the hardest. People dying in intensive care is not new, but dying without family and friends around them is very unusual. This was a another new normal to adjust to; phoning family to tell them their loved one was dying, or dead, but they could not see them.
At the same time, there was something uplifting.
Everyone had a kind of common focus and a common goal – normally everyone just gets on with doing their own thing – but we had large teams of people working together with the one focus. There were so many people. Everything was masks and sweatiness. When people took their gear off they had deep marks around their faces and that kind of matted look to their hair.
We’re still admitting patients with Covid-19 although obviously not as many as at the peak. We are currently getting about 200 patients a day coming in through A&E. About half of them have symptoms that are related to Covid, so they’re sent to the Covid side where they can be assessed and treated. All the medical staff are fully equipped with PPE because we’re anticipating that the patient has Covid until the tests prove they don’t.
It slows everything down. Everything has changed. I get a bun on my way to work – it’s my Friday treat. When you go in, you’ve got to put alcohol gel on your hands, so that’s the end of the bun. To walk through the hospital you have to put a mask on. Nobody lingers in the corridors any more. When you go into the ICU, there’s more PPE – a new mask first and more alcohol gel. Going to see a patient in a side room you’re getting on a plastic apron with arms, two pairs of gloves, a different face mask, face shield.
At the peak, we made space for about 300 Covid beds on our two sites. Now we’re back down to our normal 100 or so.
The real difficulty now is that we know full well there’s a bunch of patients out there who need management of their underlying conditions, such as operations or transplants. We’ve been working towards starting that up again but it’s difficult. It’s not a tap you can turn off and on.
If someone has been waiting years for a kidney transplant, and an organ became available, how would we get them into hospital in a safe way? We can’t ask them to self-isolate for two weeks – that’s not how organs appear. We’ve been trying to set up a system to make sure the transplant recipient is safe, because they’re immuno-suppressed.
That’s why I’ve been worried about ending the lockdown, and people going back to how things were six months ago. That needs to be pushed back against, we can’t go back.
We’ve been preparing for this weekend as if it’s New Year’s Eve. We’ve discharged as many people as we can. We’ve had to bulk up the daytime shifts, the evening shifts and the night shifts. I’m just hoping that people are sensible.
After years of outsourcing, many essential staff work for the NHS without receiving its benefits. In one London hospital, the fight is on for a better deal. By Sophie Elmhirst
On 9 February, a cold, damp Sunday, an Uber pulled up to University Hospital Lewisham in south-east London and dropped off a woman who had recently returned from China. The woman walked up to the reception desk and outlined her symptoms. She was given a mask, taken to a designated area outside the A&E building and tested for coronavirus. When, three days later, the test came back positive, it confirmed what medical authorities had already suspected: this was London’s first case.
That day, Ernesta Nat Cote, a cleaner at Lewisham hospital, heard the news from a nurse in her department. The nurses, Ernesta told me, are always the best source of information: “They tell me everything.” Ernesta has been cleaning the hospital for 11 years, ever since she first came to London. She arrives just before the start of her shift at 6.30am, clocks in and goes to clean the paediatric operating theatres, changing rooms and corridors. Over the years, she has come to know these rooms intimately: every corner, every surface, every tap.
Continue reading...Drug research, well-practised NHS staff and greater awareness of dangers give reasons for hope
When a deluge of coronavirus cases threatened to overwhelm the NHS in March, Covid-19 was a brand new and little-understood disease, causing panic as well as deaths. Hospitals under huge pressure did all they could.
Next time round, if, as everyone supposes, there is a next time, it will be different. In a second wave, or even localised spikes across the nation, the health service will know more about what it is dealing with – and will be better able to help people recover and send them home, say doctors.
Continue reading...Campaigners want affordable kits for all but health experts doubt efficacy of a mass exercise
A new divide is opening up between the “haves” and the “have nots” – this time over Covid-19 testing. While private schools and big businesses have introduced testing for their pupils and employees, allowing them to return to school and work, state schools and small businesses will be left to rely on the state. Campaigners warn that “testing inequality” could fuel greater financial inequality.
Financial giants, such as Credit Suisse, have introduced antibody testing for their employees, while the Premier League restarted its season last week, thanks to rapid antigen testing of players and backroom staff. Ocado bought 100,000 testing kits for its staff when lockdown began and some private schools intend to use testing as part of their plan to get all children back into classrooms at the start of the next academic year.
Continue reading...How the government came to scrap its contact-tracing app in favour of Apple and Google’s
Designed to be a key component of the test, track and trace programme to forge a way out of lockdown, the NHS Covid-19 app has been beset by problems from day one – despite repeated claims to the contrary.
After a trial on the Isle of Wight at the start of May, the contact-tracing app was meant to be rolled out to the rest of England by the middle of the month. That soon slipped to some time in June. Then on Wednesday it emerged that we would have to wait until the winter. Now – after much behind-the-scenes scrambling, and head-scratching in Westminster – officials have decided to ditch the app entirely in its current form.
Continue reading...Medical chiefs call for a public health campaign as faith in government strategy slumps
Senior figures from across the NHS have issued an urgent plea for a comprehensive plan to tackle a second wave of coronavirus infections, as Boris Johnson continues to lose public confidence in his handling of the pandemic.
Amid persistent fears among scientists that the virus remains too prevalent to ease the lockdown further, the prime minister has been urged to ditch “cheap political rhetoric” that risks eroding the public’s adherence to lockdown measures in the months ahead.
Continue reading...Exclusive: thirty hospitals looking to sign up hundreds of patients to take part in studies
Five new drugs are to be trialled in 30 hospitals across the country in the race to find a treatment for Covid-19, it has emerged.
Just days after global trials of hydroxychloroquine, the drug promoted by Donald Trump as a cure, were halted, British scientists are looking to sign up hundreds of patients for trials of medicines they hope will prevent people becoming ill enough to need intensive care or ventilators.
Continue reading...David McWilliams is a consultant physiotherapist helping ICU patients recover from Covid-19 – from when they first open their eyes since arriving to their first steps. His team support patients at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth hospital, which has one of the largest critical care units in Europe and recently was treating more than 200 Covid-19 patients at one time
Continue reading...With UK’s route out of lockdown dependent on success, Dido Harding faces a huge challenge
The ex-TalkTalk chief executive Dido Harding is facing one of the biggest moments in her eventful career, as she leads the government’s new track-and-trace programme upon which the country’s path out of lockdown depends.
Baroness Harding, 52, the chair of NHS Improvement, was brought in to shoulder the responsibility of this significant new strategy, personally risking the fallout if it does not go to plan.
Continue reading...Scottish first minister explains measures in phase one of loosening of restrictions; former Tory party chair calls NHS migrant surcharge ‘monstrous’
The Conservative backbenchers Henry Smith has outraged opposition parliamentarians by saying that the objection to MPs returning to the House of Commons after next week’s recess (when the current, largely-virtual proceedings will end) has come from the “lazy left” and from “workshy” Labour and nationalist politicians.
Not that I should be surprised by the lazy left but interesting how work-shy socialist and nationalist MPs tried to keep the remote Parliament going beyond 2 June.
Henry this is an appalling thing to say, would you like to compare cases dealt with in this crisis? Hours helping with food, PPE, testing? Number of questions put down to ministers? Number of bill amendments written? Also calling people working at home workshy is quite something https://t.co/RROVCxbG7O
The government’s own public health advice has said that those who can work from home should and parliament has developed a system using technology to ensure the scrutiny of government whilst allowing people to work remotely.
Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, told the London assembly this morning that he is considering banning passengers from buses and tube trains in the capital if they are not wearing a face covering. He said that he was hoping to persuade the UK government, which is currently just advising people to wear face coverings on public transport, to toughen its stance. He told the assembly:
We don’t want confusion. When there is a crisis, what’s important is to have message clarity.
Continue reading...Tribunal says if migrants can prove they cannot pay fees then they should not have to do so
A court ruling has given hope to thousands of migrants, including health and care workers, that they will no longer have to pay visa and NHS surcharge fees if they cannot afford them.
An immigration court found that the Home Office was applying too harsh a test on whether people should be forced to pay.
Continue reading...Centenarian, who raised £33m for the NHS, put forward by the prime minister
Two months ago, he was simply Capt Tom Moore.
When his fundraising exploits inspired the nation, he was made an honorary colonel to mark his 100th birthday.
Continue reading...Allegations raise questions over Movianto’s management of government stocks during coronavirus outbreak
The private firm contracted to run the government’s stockpile of personal protective equipment (PPE) was beset by “chaos” at its warehouse that may have resulted in delays in deploying vital supplies to healthcare workers, according to sources who have spoken to the Guardian and ITV News.
The allegations from delivery drivers and other well–placed sources raise questions about whether Movianto, the subsidiary of a US healthcare giant, was able to adequately manage and distribute the nation’s emergency stockpile of PPE for use in a pandemic.
Continue reading...If the UK government wants to start easing the country's lockdown restrictions, it needs to get contact tracing right. But what does that mean? What would successful contact tracing even look like? Josh Toussaint-Strauss tries to find out with a little help from Christophe Fraser, an Oxford professor and infectious disease epidemiologist, and Alex Hern, the Guardian's UK technology editor
Critics of No 10 warn U-turns undermining efforts to keep public safe from coronavirus
First people were meant to stay at home to save lives, and then government sources raised the prospect of picnics with pals and sunbathing in the park just before a sunny bank holiday weekend.
Boris Johnson told the nation that scientists thought face masks might help stop the spread of the disease, but no change was made to the government advice that they were not needed outside medical and care settings.
Continue reading...Health department understood to be returning shipment of PPE and seeking refund
Last month, amid dire warnings of shortages of personal protective equipment for health workers, ministers publicised the imminent arrival from Turkey of a fleet of RAF cargo planes bringing in a “very significant” shipment of PPE for the NHS.
Related: Picnics and sunbathing on cards as PM expected to allow more time outside
Continue reading...UK government has been accused of inflating tally to hit goal for Covid-19 testing
The government has been accused of counting some tests prematurely, reportedly expanding its daily count to include tests that have been sent out in the post, rather than those actually carried out in labs. While it denies the charge, regardless of whether the 100,000 target has been met, countries that have taken a “test, trace, isolate” approach are running a far higher proportion of tests to positive cases than the UK. Germany, which is down to fewer than 1,000 daily positive cases, is performing nearly 1m tests per week. South Korea is doing 15,000 tests per day, but has had no more than 100 daily cases since the beginning of April. So, for a robust “test, trace, isolate” regime in the UK, the number of tests would need to be vastly increased or we would need to wait for the number of cases in the community to fall significantly.
Continue reading...