Gold update from Andrew Jones
Publication date: Tuesday 26 January 2021
Shwmae pawb and good afternoon to all of you,
It has been an incredibly busy fortnight in terms of the health protection response to Covid-19. I can confirm following review and approval by Gold on 14 January 2021 that our response level remains at Enhanced. Given some pressing requirements, we carried over our agenda for 21 January to this week and will once again assess our response level then.
The overall epidemiology picture for the last two weeks has shown some early indications of a decrease in cases but it is not clear as yet whether this reduction is due to an overall reduction in tests or if the restrictions put in place before Christmas are having a positive effect on transmission. Towards the end of this week we should be able to make some firmer inferences from the emerging data.
In the meantime however, the hospital admissions and impact on mortality data remains a sobering picture. These rates are not decreasing and very sadly, we can expect a continuation of these rates before seeing a fall in figures come through the data.
As I reported last week, Wales is monitoring a UK Variant of Concern of the virus which is becoming increasingly prevalent across the UK. Two more Variants of Concern have since emerged – the ‘South Africa’ variant and the ‘Brazil’ variant. This has led to the introduction of travel restrictions and the requirement for people arriving in all parts of the UK to present a negative test on arrival.
As ever, our teams continue to support the response and our firm advice to the public is to continue to follow the rules to avoid transmission of Coronavirus and to protect everyone in our communities, including the most vulnerable.
I reported to you two weeks ago that, as part of continuously improving our systems and processes, some new governance arrangements would come into effect from week commencing 18 January 2021. I can confirm that this has taken place with a revised meeting rhythm adopted. The purpose of the new governance arrangements is to provide greater clarity of purpose to both Gold and IMT and ensure strengthened processes for reporting, escalation and assurance. Gold will focus on setting out the strategic direction of activity, scrutinise delivery and provide a point of escalation for issues that require further support.
The Incident Management Team (IMT) will be responsible for our tactical level response and providing oversight to the implementation of operational activity, ensuring that all of the elements, which make up the response have clear definitions and delivery plans. IMT will also provide a centralised point of sign off and advice with day-to-day input from the Incident Director. Moving forward IMT will provide the SitRep update to Gold and to others in the system, as well as taking time each week to reflect and provide a forward look of activity including proactively providing specialist advice. Some of the elements that make up our response will see refined definitions as we look to improve our work and all of the elements will be brought into the IMT, including our contribution to some programmes which currently sit alongside, like the vaccination programme.
As of Thursday 14 January 2020, 346 of our staff have received their first vaccination. As Tracey mentioned in her Q&A Session last week Public Health Wales is arranging to be able to administer Covid-19 vaccinations to our staff. This is to supplement the provision already in place through Health Boards. Initially we’ll be receiving approximately 100 doses per week and we are setting up three vaccination sites – one in North Wales and two in South Wales.
Important information about staff vaccination plans are shared with staff in the daily staff e-bulletin, on the intranet and through the manager briefing.
Please do encourage your team mates to read these updates so that they can access the latest information. If you have any feedback about these updates, please share these directly with the communications team who collate these and share with the leadership team. You can email communications.team@wales.nhs.uk
I’d like to finish by wishing you a safe, healthy and productive week ahead. Look after yourselves and each other.
Cofion
Andrew