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COVID-19 Bulletin: Tuesday 29 December

December 29, 2020

 

New: 

Reminder: 

 

1. New: Second wave of vaccination programme goes live at Sandwell 

The next phase of our COVID vaccination programme for colleagues, patients, and care home partners began today at the Education Centre, based at Sandwell Hospital.

Those having their jab should arrive at their timed slot and wear warm clothing as they may have to wait outside.

It’s expected the process will take around 30 minutes per person.

The phased roll out is targeting colleagues in the first instance who fall under the very high or high risk category and those working in the following areas, ITU, neonatal ITU, D15, D17, emergency departments, AMU, ENT, delivery suite and the mortuary.

Colleagues who fit the above criteria, should have received an email with the booking details. If you are working in one of these areas and have not been contacted please raise this via your group Tactical representative or line manager.

There are still slots available for those matching the above criteria.

Call the booking line on ext 4112 for an appointment.

The phoneline is open between 8am-8pm today and tomorrow.

Given the limited supply of the vaccine, if for whatever reason you are no longer able to attend your appointment, please contact the booking team to cancel and reschedule.

If you have either a first or follow up appointment booked at Walsall Manor Hospital, they will be honouring these so please ensure you attend.

Earlier this month Your Health Partnership Primary Care Network (YHP PCN) started delivering the vaccine to patients in the first wave of the programme.

2. New: Do you have patients suitable for the RECOVERY trial?

If you have any patients who are either COVID-19 positive or suspected to have the virus in your ward or area please consider talking to them about the RECOVERY trial.

The study aims to find effective treatments for patients with the virus and has already established the use of dexamethasone as standard therapy.

It has three randomisation stages which means that it is possible for the patient to receive any combination of these treatments or none at all.

Colleagues can discuss the aims and the treatment options with a research nurse, or they can simply seek permission for the research nurse to visit their patient to discuss the study in more detail and obtain the consent. An eligibility form will need to be completed and this will also establish the suitability of the treatment options. The research nurse will on hand to help you.

The recovery trial was one of the very first COVID-19 studies to commence running here at the Trust with the primary investigator being Dr Sarb Clare.

To find out more details, please watch this short video featuring Ash Turner, Clinical Research Charge Nurse:

For more information please visit https://connect2.swbh.nhs.uk/recovery-trial/ or call ext. 6657.

3. Reminder: Rapid swabs must be used for ED patients

Clinical colleagues working within our emergency departments must use rapid swab testing for ALL patients in both Amber and Red streams. Rapid tests will be processed urgently, improving the turnaround times.

If you have an urgent sample:

  • Place the correctly labelled specimen into a clear specimen bag and seal.
  • Place into the second larger clear zip locked specimen bag.
  • Place this doubled bag specimen into a purple urgent COVID sample bag
  • The purple urgent bag can now also be posted into the COVID drop off box.

Further information on processing samples can be found on Connect by clicking here.

4. Reminder: Remember to go with the (lateral) flow – input your results

Thank you to all of you who have submitted your lateral flow test results onto Connect so far. Lateral flow tests are designed to help to identify any asymptomatic COVID positive cases and helps ensure we are playing our part in keeping patients, fellow NHS workers and our families safe.

More than 5,000 frontline colleagues have received the self-testing home kits. Of those just  2,000 have submitted their results. Recording this data could help to save lives, so it’s really important that each time you use the test your results – positive or negative – are submitted.

You can upload your test results here via Connect, but only when you are on the Trust network. If you carry out the test and it is positive, please ensure you contact your line manager immediately and book in for a PCR swab test to confirm the result.

Important information for managers:

If you have any Lateral Flow test kits remaining in your department that are not allocated to an individual please ensure you return these to Mike Carr or Kulwinder Johal as soon as possible. It’s important that we are able to roll out the testing kits to as many colleagues as possible and don’t allow any kits to remain unused.