COVID-19 Bulletin: Friday 24 April
April 24, 2020
This is our once a night bulletin. Please use this bulletin and daily cascade arrangements within care and corporate groups to guide local action. Remember KINDNESS is our watchword in implementing our plans. It is also our way of keeping in touch with shielders, home workers, part-timers and volunteers. You are on the team. Thank you!
It is really important right now that we try and develop confidence in the local community that the NHS will cope when they ask for our care. And really important too that we commit ourselves to science in recruiting to research trials to find the best treatments. For the avoidance of doubt, nonsense about 5G spread or disinfectant injections are exactly the kind of gobbledegook we should be very public about rejecting. If people will believe in anything, they believe in nothing: We need them to believe in us. Let’s trust in the work we are doing.1. The magnificent 7: SWB survivor stories
You know that the Trust is not spinning. There is feel good and feel awful in the COVID-19 situation. The human beings who have lost their lives are recorded below and each is an individual tragedy. Toby’s Friday message today wrote about one such death.
But it is also important we honour those whose lives have been saved by your care and skill, and by their own resilience. We have been publicising some survivors from all our local communities, including some staff from the Trust. It is important we recognise these good outcomes, and maybe for loved ones at home and for family it will help us to manage the fear they have each time we come to work.
2. Talking openly about deaths among BME staff
More than 4 in 10 of our colleagues come from Black or Minority Ethnic communities. The Trust strives to be as wonderfully diverse as the populations that we serve. Yesterday we we explained the work we have done on data from the Trust, from across the city, and national data on deaths with COVID-19. That shows a clear link to age and gender, and a close association to hypertension and (less so) to diabetes. Chizo Agwu, our deputy medical director, has been leading work to analyse and make sense of our local data. Her film is here.
What is clearly true is that NHS wide the majority of care workers whose deaths have been reported have come from BME communities. The Trust is working with professional associations to make sure that we implement their recommendations and suggestions, alongside the work we have done from the start of the Pandemic. We know that BME colleagues have accessed tests in good numbers, proportionate to, and in fact above, the overall demography of our workforce. We believe our PPE is available to all. As ever get in touch if you have concerns. We want to work to resolve them by making changes.
3. Here’s another PPE reminder
The guidance has not changed. The PPE is stocked and ready for you. What matters now is using it when it is needed in our marathon. And using it right.
Dr Mark Anderson, GIM consultant, and Deputy Medical Director, has a short update he wants you to listen to!
4. Lilac is coming…
Over recent week we have worked to make sure that we all clearly understand the meaning of our Blue and our Red areas. Over the next few days, we will be introducing a small number of Lilac areas. These will provide a place for people with low likelihood of COVID-19 but some remaining professional suspicion. It is important that our infection control practices remain consistent in all our areas and that we remain vigilant to the reality that all of us may spread this virus, even if we are asymptomatic. Look out for the guidance and timetables over the weekend.
5. Red and blue – ensure you use the correct lifts to transfer +COVID patients
Our lifts have been clearly marked as either “red” for +COVID or ?COVID patients, or “blue” for those patients who do not have COVID-19 symptoms. Please make sure that you use the correct lifts yourself when moving around our hospital sites and particularly when transferring patients who are moving between “red” areas. These patients should only be using the dedicated red lifts.
Numbers not statistics: Today’s totals (Yesterday’s totals)
| Number of our patients confirmed with COVID-19 during the Pandemic | Number of positive COVID-19 positive patients who have been discharged during the Pandemic | Number of patients who have died in our hospitals who tested positive for COVID-19 during the Pandemic | Number of patients entered by the Trust into a COVID-19 research trial to date | Number of COVID-19 positive patients who are inpatients with us today | Number of our staff absent due to ill-health or isolation today |
| 902 (885) | 501 (489) | 268 (262) | 72 (69) | 133 (134) | 653 (650) |
The Connect Coronavirus page is continually being updated with the latest news and guidance regarding the virus, please take the time to read and familiarise yourself with the available guidance.