COVID-19 Bulletin: Friday 10 September

September 10, 2021

Numbers not statistics: This week (last week)

1. New: Complacency kills – Don’t drop your guard

After months donning masks, washing hands and keeping 2 metres away from everyone, the almost relentless focus on infection control can become exhausting but the fact remains that whilst the national lockdowns have subsided and face masks rules relaxed, there still remains a very real risk of catching COVID-19 or passing it on to your patients, colleagues and loved ones.

Colleagues should ensure they stick to the infection control practices that we have established, respectfully challenge colleagues and patients who fail to adhere to them and keep themselves and those around them safe.

Seven rules of Infection Control:

1. Hand Hygiene: Make sure you take the time to practice good hand hygiene, this means make sure your sleeves are rolled up, rings and watches off and you take the time to carefully wash your hands.
2. Wear your face masks: In the hot weather it can be all too easy to go without, but it’s critical to ensure that when you are in shared areas and in clinical spaces you wear your face masks and ensure you take the time to put them on properly, ensuring a good seal around the masks.
3. Bare below the elbows: Good hand hygiene and safe care can only be achieved by being bare below the elbows. This means that you must not wear watches or bracelets or jewellery that interferes with your ability to effectively wash your hands. This also includes removing ties, lanyards and accessories that pose a cross contamination risk moving from patient to patient.
4. Right PPE in the right environment: Make sure you take the time to wear the right PPE suitable for the task you are undertaking.
5. Test yourself for COVID-19 regularly: Weekly testing for COVID-19 is available for all staff which involves a painless saliva sample being submitted. This can provide you with proof and assurance that you are COVID-19 free and proof that your infection control practices are successfully keeping you safe from harm.
6. Regular patient swabbing is critical to providing the right care: It’s important that colleagues involved in the delivery of clinical care take the time to understand the swabbing pathways in use. These documents describe in details the schedules of swabbing that should apply to each patient depending on their circumstances. Swabbing ensures we are able to provide the right care to patients as well as ensuring that we are able to protect colleagues and patients around them.
7. Clean equipment is key to being able to provide safe and effective care: Follow the rules of the Use it, Clean It, Store it programme to continue providing safe care to our patients.

2. New: Use it, clean it, store it

The regular cleaning of shared patient equipment is key to reducing the risk of cross infection between patients and staff.  Patient and staff equipment can harbour potentially harmful bacteria that is unseen to the naked eye.

By performing regular cleaning of equipment and using the green ‘I am clean’ labels  this will help to give both patients and our staff, confidence that equipment is clean and ready for use!

Remember that you need to clean patient equipment after every use and between each patient.

To keep equipment fully charged or to help to keep your ward or area neat and tidy, once you have cleaned, store it in the appropriate place.

So the next time you use a work station on wheels or a dinamap… clean it and store it….use it clean it store it!

Instructional videos on how to ‘Use, clean and store’ equipment is available on the following link:

• UCS – WoW
• UCS – Commode
• UCS – Patient Hoist
• UCS – Dinamap Blood Pressure Machine
• UCS – Blood Glucose Monitoring Box

3. New: Consultation on mandatory vaccination for frontline health and care staff

A consultation was launched yesterday on protecting patients by mandating vaccination for frontline health and social care staff in England. It seeks to consult on whether vaccination should be made a condition of deployment for frontline workers in health and care settings.

The government is seeking views on plans for staff in health and care settings in England to be required to have COVID-19 and flu vaccines to protect vulnerable people.

The six-week consultation is looking at whether requirements should apply for health and wider social care workers: those in contact with patients and people receiving care. It would mean only those who are fully vaccinated, unless medically exempt, could be deployed to deliver health and care services. The consultation will also seek views on whether flu vaccines should be a requirement for health and care workers.

For more information please click here

4. Updated: How to safely package your saliva test

Many of you have signed up to the weekly saliva (LAMP) testing programme – which is a speedy and accurate way of determining whether you have COVID-19.

You can book a kit collection slot for the weekly test which simply requires you to spit into a tube in the morning before you brush your teeth or an hour after you have eaten.

When you arrive at work, you can deposit your sample into a red collection box. Many of these are positioned around our acute and community sites.

Here’s a pictorial guide on how to package your swab:

Uptake of the weekly saliva test is monitored to ensure we are doing everything we can to protect our patients, the public and each other.

You can also watch a video on how to do your saliva test here.

The latest data by group is below:

5. Reminder: Following the right guidance when working for more than one organisation

Some colleagues are in a position where they are working for more than one NHS organisation.

Colleagues are advised that, when working across our sites, it is our isolation guidance that must be adhered to, which is that anyone, regardless of vaccination status, who lives in the same household as a positive COVID-19 case must not return to work, apart from some agreed exemptions.

Exemptions are:

• Those working in critical care where the prolonged absence of staff risks the safety of providing clinical or care services.
• On that basis, the team will mitigate that risk by allowing those who’ve had direct contact with a household member who is COVID positive to return to work with restrictions in place. These include a negative PCR test and having no contact with non-COVID-19 patients.
• The decision to allow staff to attend work in other areas will be made on a case by case basis. A COVID-19 self-isolation exemption decision assessment will need to be completed by a line manager. It will also require authorisation by the Director of IPC/Deputy Director IPC or the on-call manager out-of-hours.

This decision will ensure we can continue to support safe patient care and the safety of all our colleagues.

For the protocol and guidance, click here.

6. Reminder: Boost your immunity this winter

As we head towards Autumn, it won’t be long until the flu season will be upon us. Not only will we need to shield ourselves against flu as we approach the latter end of the year, it’s also important to protect ourselves as much as possible from COVID-19.

Towards the end of September we will be offering the flu jab and COVID-19 booster to all colleagues here at the Trust. These free vaccinations are on offer to help protect yourselves, patients, colleagues and loved ones from flu and COVID-19.

More information on how to book your slot for these vaccinations will be released in due course so keep a look out in the daily communications bulletin and on Connect.

Boost your immunity this winter.

7. Reminder: COVID vaccination status for NHS staff entering care homes  

From 11 November 2021, all care home workers, and anyone entering a care home, will need to be fully vaccinated, unless they are exempt.

These new government regulations state that all care home staff are required to provide proof of having had two doses of an approved COVID-19 vaccine or that they fall within a specified exemption.  This applies to all CQC regulated care homes providing nursing or personal care in England.

All Trust staff (including temporary, voluntary, bank and agency staff) working to fulfil a service in a care home funded by the NHS are in scope of these regulations. This will include, but is not limited to:

• Primary care (general practice, dentistry, optometry and pharmacy), community health, mental health, learning disability and autism (MHLDA), acute teams providing outreach into care homes, non-emergency patient transport services, end of life community teams and staff attending to maintain medical equipment
• Staff not in a front-line caring role who visit a care home. For example, in relation to continuing health care or a training provider.

Under current vaccination guidance, eight weeks are required between the first and second vaccine dose. Therefore, all staff entering a care home for work – who are not exempt – need to have had their first dose by 16 September 2021 at the latest.

Line managers are asked to liaise with their teams who may be affected by these regulations to:

• Understand and document vaccination and exemption status of staff members
• Actively support uptake of vaccination ahead of 16 September 2021 and conduct supportive one to one conversations to establish reasons for vaccine hesitancy
• Carry out a risk assessment for staff and services impacted and actively plan workforce deployment for services. This is to avoid disruption to our service provision in care homes
• Ensure that relevant staff will be able to demonstrate, via the NHS app or otherwise, that they have either been fully vaccinated or are exempt from the requirement.

Further information/guidance can be obtained via Group HR Business Partners.

You can read the latest FAQs here.