Staff briefing roundup

Here’s a summary of what was covered in today’s staff briefing…

Andrew Geldard

The NHS COVID situation has calmed significantly
No statistics this week from NHS
Number of deaths reported in England was down to 15
Regarding the overall COVID-19 incident – the numbers continue to drop
Government announced that shielding individuals can stop isolating from 1 August 2020
Expecting some form of announcement from the government around changing the 2m social distancing rule to 1m
One metre social distancing rule will enable the hospitality industry to restart from 4 July 2020
We have decreased from national incident level 4 down to level 3
National NHS emergency incident still remains at a level 4 – all powers invested in NHS are continuing
No further guidance about NHS returning back to work except hospital staff – admin can return if social distancing measures in place

General work of CCG

There are three major items that need to be delivered by end of September:
- New community contract – preferably with EPUT for variety of community services; we are hoping to get to an agreement by end of September 2020
- Herts Urgent Care (HUC) contract – issues with this contract as it includes GP extended access service. This service is to be transferred to the primary care network at the end of year
- One Health and Care Partnership – plans about stepping this up for a go-live date by end of September. Agreed with PAH tentatively the go-live date for contractual issues will be 1 April 2021

There is still a big unknown around a second wave with easing of lockdown restrictions

Testing

Test and trace remains the heart of strategy to deal with COVID-19, it is an integral part of any future outbreak management
Mobile testing units across Essex continue to work very well – 200-400 tests preformed at each location per week

Antibody testing

The aim is to open online booking for NHS staff in west Essex from 29 June
No clinical reason for the antibody test – it is to collect evidence and observe the spread of the virus
Antibody tests are booked on a self-referral basis and are not mandatory. They will be offered to everyone
Systems and governance is taking some time
Opening up onsite testing at St Margaret’s with EPUT
We are looking into enabling GPs who have phlebotomy capability to carry out antibody tests on their own staff
More information to be circulated when the booking system goes live
Working to test from frontline backwards then to CCG staff afterwards

New ways of working

Individual risk assessments have been sent out to directorates
Everyone to complete individual risk assessments with line manager
New COVID-19 pages on intranet will be live today or tomorrow – it will contain easy to read information about working at the CCG and at home
The report on the full risk assessments of CCG building can be found there
Working from home – following government guidance to continue working from home unless you cannot
Still in process of getting CCG ready for people to come back and work in the office
Still waiting for permanent stock of hand sanitisers – in high demand
We will be looking at how best to carry out decluttering of offices this week – we will be identifying things that need to go into storage or to be thrown away
We will be inviting staff in to declutter by directorate – we may tie visits in with antibody testing dates – more information on this to be circulated later this week

Any other business

Quiz night – seven teams battled it out for two hours on Microsoft Teams at the CCG’s first virtual family quiz night
Winners – the Quaranteam, led by Naomi Brooks. Congratulations to Naomi and her team: Lara Segovia, Lucy O’Shea, Dr Christine Moss, Dr Hemali Parekh, Dr Sarah Crane and Maggie Pacini
Well done everyone and thanks for taking part – we look to do this again in the future
Jeneva Allison’s last day at the CCG
We welcome Kamaljit Kaur as our new HR Business Partner