Gold update from Huw George 25 March 2021
Published: 29 March 2021
Prynhawn da pawb,
I had the pleasure of stepping back into the Chair’s seat last week. The Gold group began this week’s meeting with our standing agenda item reviewing our response level. This week we once again confirmed that we remain at Enhanced level.
The overall rate of coronavirus in Wales has remained relatively stable over the last week with the 7-day incident rate at 41 cases per 100,000 – down only slightly from 42 last week. Whilst the overall numbers are looking cautiously positive, there are still a number of clusters and outbreaks that we continue to support in some localities.
I’m pleased to report that 1,263 current PHW employees have been given their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, which is 57% of our total staff and 889 of our total staff have now received a second dose of the Covid-19 vaccine and these figures continue to increase. All front line staff have now received their invitation to get vaccinated and I’d like to encourage those of you who have not yet taken this up to so do. We are on target to achieve the second Welsh Government milestone, which is for all people over the age of 50 having been offered a vaccine by the middle of April. As we’ve highlighted before, the prioritisation has followed the JCVI guidance with patient-facing staff in the first groups to receive invitations. If you are unsure about what priority group you are in, you can find this on our dedicated staff vaccination pages on our intranet [inset link]. And once again, a reminder to read the daily staff e-bulletin where we publish updates on this as they are available.
From 25 March 2021, we are in the Pre-election period leading up to May’s Senedd elections. This means that we need to follow guidance along the following principles:
• The NHS and its constituent bodies have no party political affiliation. Nothing should be said or done by any member or employee in his or her official capacity that suggests otherwise
• NHS staff should not be asked to engage in activities which could give rise to the criticism that people paid from public funds are being used for party political purposes
• Parties and candidates should be treated even-handedly
• Party political meetings should not be held on NHS premises during the pre-election period
In line with our role in the COVID-19 response, Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre (CDSC) will continue to publish reports and analyses to support our statutory function in surveillance, and to support investigation of cases, trends, incidents and outbreaks with field epidemiology and other methods to control and prevent infection. As Andrew highlighted in his Gold Update last week, CDSC will continue to review the content and frequency of reports to meet the changing need, refocussing as appropriate. We will communicate any changes to this in a timely way to relevant stakeholders.
Since the inception of the Covid-19 response in February 2020, the NCC service has been operational seven days a week and has managed a huge volume of incoming calls from health and care providers, businesses and members of the public alike. The overall volume of calls has fallen steadily in recent months and the nature of the calls means that in most cases they are best answered by local Test Trace Protect (TTP) teams or Health Boards. This, coupled with the need to support the reactivation of our own services means we are proposing to develop an exit strategy to close the NCC function. There will of course be a transitional period as the TTP call centres come up to capacity. We’ll be setting up a task and finish group to plan and implement a wind-down from 1 May 2021.
As we head into the Easter holiday period, I hope that many of you will have the opportunity to rest, recuperate and spend time not thinking about work over the long bank holiday weekend. And for those of you working on-call or weekend shifts, my thanks to you for keeping our systems running, for answering the phones, analysing the data, processing samples—each of your helping to keep the public safe in a whole range of ways. Diolch yn fawr.
Cofion caredig ac aros yn ddiogel ac yn iach.
Kind regards, and stay safe and well.
Huw