Staff briefing roundup

Welcome – Rob Gerlis

General update – Peter Wightman

• We visited Jenner House – there is now a new floor down and it is opening back up
• The CCG celebration event took place last week. We looked back over the last eight years with some interesting speakers
• It was good to hear about the work with BAME communities and vaccines and everyone should be proud, especially Ian Tompkins and the primary care and comms teams who have done excellent work on this
• We also heard about young people’s mental health. It was a good session and a chance to say a few thank yous and recognise the contributions everyone has made whether they have been here a few months or eight years
• Thanks to Vanessa Moon for making the event happen
• We also met with Kemi Badenoch, MP Saffron Walden, this week – she is very passionate about health and every six weeks we meet with her at her surgery
• We talked her through the other stuff we are doing – in particular, what is happening at Stansted and the work with the Afghanistan community
• On Monday we had our ICS exec team – this was a chance to step back and look at the uncertainty we are dealing with
• Jane Halpin came to join us – it was so good to see her and I know she is on the mend and was very positive about the next stage for her
• We also met with Cllr Spence (ECC cabinet member for health and adult social care) on Friday and we talked about moving forward and the work we are doing
• The health and inequalities group will meet the week after next
• We looked at the key areas and how we will work together. We have some really good working relationships on adult social care we need to build on and we are looking at having a summit in November to get wider ECC councillors together to talk about this
• It was good to move on from the boundary discussions which have dominated our thoughts for so long
• We looked at function mapping/suggestions and what is working and how we can work at place and ICS level in the future

Rob Gerlis

• We are going to have to go through a process for recruiting an Accountable Officer – we had a shortlisting session and the standard was not very high
• There was someone from elsewhere who was above the line but we need to do some work and also leave it so Jane (Halpin) has a chance to apply on a level footing
• This will be a proper process and a decision will be made at the end of October/start of November

Ian Tompkins – local update

• COVID booster jabs are now available to all over 50s and health and social care workers
• You can get these from your GP or go on the national booking system
• When you go along to get your jab just make sure you take your ID to show you are an NHS worker
• You should have received a letter via email last week about this. If you haven’t, please email the Comms team and we will send it out to you again
• Do also let us know, via the Comms inbox, if you have difficulty booking online and we will report that back
• You can only have it six months after you have had your second jab
• As well as COVID boosters, flu jabs are also important and ours will be done at PAH – news to come about staff having them in mid-October
• Ubook desk booking system – the function where the desk booking is cancelled if you don’t check-in 10 minutes before you arrive is being looked at, as getting stuck in traffic is causing problems with this
• Staff survey – only takes 6/7 minutes to complete so please do that as soon as you can

Vaccination update – Stephen Fry

• Uptake figures similar story to last week, slow and steady with first doses and second doses across the board – there have been some negative numbers, but this is where some people have had a birthday and moved into the next age category
• New cases – slight uptake in Harlow but other areas have evened out
• National deaths are down and it seems quite a bit slower on a daily basis
• The flu data is also now available – again, it is fairly early days and there are lots of different categories but it is anywhere between two and six per cent have had the vaccine. We will track this going forward and the differing targets which depend on the cohort
• Pregnant women are included and there will be data on this next week
• Rob Gerlis – there has been a perception the third Pfizer makes you feel unwell but I had mine and was fine
• Vanessa Moon – next week is the ICS staff briefing so the CCG one planned for Tuesday 12 is cancelled – we will send invitations to the ICS one, which will take place on the same day, in the next few days